Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2001 12:45:15 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> Cc: Wes Peters <wes@dobox.com>, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>, Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, Dirk Myers <dirkm@teleport.com>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BSD, .Net comments - any reponse to this reasoning? Message-ID: <3B43724B.7DDE171D@mindspring.com> References: <20010630173455.T344@teleport.com> <20010701032900.A93049@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010701132353.W344@teleport.com> <20010702152649.A18127@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010702180222.A2667@hades.hell.gr> <20010702161055.A18543@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010702172448.I4896@lpt.ens.fr> <3B41F0E4.B55E6937@softweyr.com> <20010703172216.F39318@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <20010703.12235600@star.dobox.com> <20010703195732.A42423@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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j mckitrick wrote: > I think I know what threw me off. It was the whole concept > of why the FSF wants to be copyright holder. IIUC *now*, > this is to make sure no one changes the license from the > GPL, correct? Since there are no other copyright owners in > this case, this is a given. FSF code will always remain > under the GPL license, then. They want an assignment of rights for several reasons; the one they claim, which is actually bogus, is to permit legal defense. It's bogus because the license is viral, and so applies to all derivative works, which include all contributions; therefore, they could act as a single litigant, representing a class in a class-action suit. Thus there is no need for the assignment for that purpose. The main reason they want an assignment of rights is to protect them from patents owned by the contributors; it would be easy to cripple commercial competitive ability of GPL'ed code by donating code that was covered by a patent, and then suing if the code ever competed with you. This is actually pretty bogus: it's the opinion of most intellectual property lawyers that including code under a patent in GPL'ed code distributed/donated by you constitutes a blanket license to use the patent in the context of the program. Further, they argue, that also extends to the U.C.C. prohibitions on differential pricing policies and discriminatory and predatory trade practices. If we translate that to English we get "If you license the patent to 'A' for one price, you must offer the same price to 'B'". This boils down to having to then license that patent for $0... thus destroying your intellectual property values. A secondary reason for assignment of rights is to permit the redistribution under another license, in the future. While I believe the FSF is ideologically opposed to any license changes, I also believe that it might be possible to put them into a tight financial corner, which would mean they could be forced to "use their assests". The reality is that it's far more likely intended to remove the "at the autor's option" clause for distribution under future versions of the GPL. Since the GPL is primarily intended as an instrumentality of "The GNU Manifesto", it's possible that a better instrumentality for social revolution could be devised, and the FSF wants to be able to move its code to that if it so chooses (in fact, there is such an instrumentality: the eCOS license actually better aligns with the goals of the "Manifesto": the GPL is comparatively a pretty poor instantiation). Finally, by assigning your rights in the code to the FSF, they ensure that your code _will not_ be released under another license, thus making their GPL'ed version of the code "the only game in town". This also explains the "emacs vs. xemacs" relationship: while they are not in control of xemacs developement, they can claim it's a derivative work of emacs, and maintain some rights control anyway; since it's GPL, the only threat is that someone may donate code to xemacs, and turn around and sell or donate it elsewhere under s different license. To do that, they's have to prove non-derivation. So there is an uneasy truce, with only occasional brush skirmishes. You have to realize that the GPL is an instrumentality, intended to achieve the social change sought by "The GNU Manifesto". It's not the best at doing this, but that is and was the intent of its author. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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