Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2004 11:10:59 -0800 From: underway@comcast.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New Open Source License: Single Supplier Open Source License Message-ID: <yjhdyju9mk.dyj@mail.comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <20040125170439.GA1533@online.fr> (Rahul Siddharthan's message of "Sun, 25 Jan 2004 12:04:39 -0500") References: <20040125170439.GA1533@online.fr>
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Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> writes: > Richard Schilling wrote: >> The [L]GPL license makes this the submission of changes mandatory, > > No, it does not. Please do your homework before posting such rubbish > in public. What is mandatory is distributing source code if you > redistribute your binary. Since you are not planning to allow > redistribution, this is a non-issue. The GPL and LGPL emphatically do > not require submission of changes, private or public, back to the > original author. Private changes can remain in your hands, and you're > required to give source code only to parties to whom you distribute a > binary. While it's probably low risk to assume that some private derivatives are not subject to the "all third parties" clause, it's none-the-less debatable, given the GPL's loose use of the word "distribute", which doesn't have a well-known meaning, at least to typical licensors and licensees who are the ones who are ostensibly using the language. The liberal interpretation of the GPL pretends that "distribute" and "publish" are interchangeable and that the GPL's "distribute or publish" is thus redundant. Copyright law uses the phrase "distribute to the public", which leads one to assume that there can be private distribution too. E.g., distribution between two friends or two companies or within a company or even between one person's two computers. It's not clear what the GPL means, even if the FSF has made clear what they believe it to mean. (The FSF isn't the only user of the GPL, of course.) Going further, I seriously think it's possible to read GPL clause 2 as an intertwined-rights license. That is, it could be read as saying that you may modify and distribute the derivative, but it doesn't say you may modify and not distribute the derivative. The subclauses 2a and 2c don't make much sense if you are not going to distribute the derivative, and in clause 2c would actually be non-sensical on two counts when it requires the startup message to say the the program may be *re*distributed by users under the GPL, when the private derivative has private non-GPL code and this is not under the GPL. > GPL violation, there are legal recourses. Sending the original > author your private modification is not a requirement of any licence I > know of (and is probably not enforceable even if you required it). IIRC, it was on AT&T's Korn shell, and I'm fairly sure a couple of others I've seen out of large companies. > And your licence violates practically every other requirement of open > source as commonly understood and as defined on www.opensource.org, > starting with the very first (free redistribution). So please don't > call it open source. Fooey. Open source is software which you can read without cost. Remember "The Open Software Foundation" and what licenses they had? Don't let a Linux-heavy committee draw the line arbitrarily on the wrong side of the GPL and redefine this term which has an obvious natural English descriptive meaning. (Thank the USPTO for disallowing the trademark claim, for the same reason.) Otherwise, I don't consider GPL code open source, because it's not open to public derivation without payment in the form of cross-licensing of the deriver's work. If you feel compelled to use the committee-approved definition, please capitalize it. > You're trying to hitch a free ride on the "open > source" buzzword, without meeting its requirements. The world does > not owe you a living. All true, but it's only a variant on what Perens and the opensource.org crowd are doing with the "open" buzzword. The world does not owe opensource.org the world's copyright licenses, unless they choose to accept their restrictive, proprietary licenses, with the GPL being only one of the worst which meet opensource.org's arbitrary definitions, created mainly so that "open" is more-or-less equivalent to "GPL-compatible" so that the restrictive GPL can hitch a free ride on the "open" buzzword. At least Richard has the merit of doing it for his living, and not for his pride, as is evidenced by the GPL's prohibitions against putting a GPL'd "getline" call in an otherwise BSDL'd program; that's about hubris, not freedom or openness. Have a nice day. Way to go, JPL!
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