Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2000 21:27:46 -0500 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Sun's web site Message-ID: <200008190227.VAA54774@nospam.hiwaay.net> In-Reply-To: Message from "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> of "Thu, 17 Aug 2000 20:35:10 PDT." <NCBBLIEPOCNJOAEKBEAKOEJIKEAA.davids@webmaster.com>
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"David Schwartz" writes: > > > Notice under GPL you do not give up the copyright on the software. You > > still own it and control it. Presumably even the mods others (anonymous > > contributors who don't go to lengths to claim their own copyright on the > > revisions) put into it. What I'm saying is the copyright holder is still > > free at a later date to jump back in with a non-GPL version including > > developments during its GPL phase. YMMV, depends on how good your > > lawyers and public relations people are. > > Umm, how would the original author wind up with the rights to distribute > changes that others have made? Presumably, when one submits modifications to > a piece of GPL'd software, one licenses them under the GPL. While one has a certain level of automatic copyright protection on works not specifically tagged with a copyright notice, one can loose any claims by failing to assert one's rights with proper labeling. An example was when Intel lost the rights to their original 8086. Posting changes to a work which already has a copyright notice attached and not amending that notice to assert one's own claims is excellent grounds to claim one has surrendered all rights to the copyright holder in the notice. Copyright and license terms are not things the government enforces. What the government can do is to provide the judicial system for the copyright holder to enforce his rights. Would suggest you read the GPL not as manifesto from Richard Stallman, but for what it is, the terms of your right to use a copyrighted work. Only the copyright holder can enforce the terms of GPL on his work. The government can't do it. Richard Stallman can't do it. Lines 6 and 7 of the GPL stipulate only verbatim unmodified copies of the GPL document be distributed, preventing me from quoting it here. Observe that paragraph 2a mandates that one identify the changes one has made in the redistribution. Failure to comply with the terms of the license would be further grounds to argue one was anonymously yielding copyright rights. After the page break the paragraph starting at line 124 expands upon the claim of rights by stating its not to claim works entirely written by you, only the derivative works. It does bind the derivative works. Notice that paragraph 4 is talking about what a user or one creating a derivative work is allowed to do. The "voice" which is speaking is the copyright holder, the license granter, who is not bound by the terms of his own license. Paragraph 6 says if you modify my (figuratively speaking) work then you may not place any more restrictions on it that I have done. Any good lawyer should be able to twist this all the way back to the case where the mentioned "recipient" also being the "originator" who is now receiving code which is forbidden from having any more restrictions than he himself imposes, additional copyright would be an additional restriction, therefore it must be the originator's to do with as he pleases. Paragraph 10 continues to reinforce my claims by stating that if you wish to redistribute outside of the terms of the GPL you contact the copyright holder. Oops, not in exactly that language, they say "the author." Not plural authors. Search on "author" and see all uses in context refer to the copyright holder. The example copyright notice on line 294 uses "<name of author>". If nothing else I think I've demonstrated the GPL document is poorly written. Apple and Sun are wise for not adopting GPL but for writing their own documents which say the same thing, clearer. Haven't heard of IBM doing likewise but IBM's lawyers are good enough to prove a cat is a dog so they don't have to. I'm not a lawyer. The only legal training I have is in the reading of contracts I have been asked to sign, and learning from the lawyers I have paid to explain such contracts to me. The GPL is not a contract I would sign. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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