Re: Copyright lawyers analysis of Andreas Pour's Interpretation
[I've deleted a lot of material which I don't think is relevant to
discuss. For the most part, I agreed with his points from this portion
of this message. I disagree with some of the points he has stated in
other messages, but I've already stated those disagreements and see no
urgency in repeating those disagreements in response to any urls.]
On Tue, Feb 15, 2000 at 01:34:44AM -0500, Andreas Pour wrote:
> Now, in the Gimp/X example, let's consider what the "collective
> works" copyright resides in. What have you done? You have added X
> to Gimp, changing neither. Thus, your "collective works" copyright
> would reside in the X/Gimp combination -- in the selection of using
> X and Gimp together. I doubt very much you would be entitled to a
> copyright in that. There is no originality in doing this. If there is
> no copyright, there is no "work", and hence, under Section 0 of the
> GPL, no "Program" (in fact it does not make sense to license something
> that is in the public domain).
It's been my experience that you can't just place two pieces of code
next to each other and expect them to work flawlessly. Someone had to
debug them and put some real work into making them work properly together.
Once that work has been done, you're talking about copying and
distribution issues, not authorship.
> Moreover, even if you could get a copyright in that combination, there
> is no problem with releaseing the kghostview/Qt combination under
> the GPL.
3b of the QPL prevents you from distributing QPLed code under the
terms of Section 2 of the GPL.
> Note that the collective work copyright does *not* reside in
> kghostview or in Qt; only in the combination (basically in the
> selection of which works to combine).
You're now claiming that the author of kghostview just happened,
coincidentally, with no creativity, to come up with something that works
with Qt?
> I have no problem releasing my selection of combining kghostview and
> Qt under the GPL -- people are free to copy and change that selection
> however they please. What restrictions of the GPL would be violated?
Section 6. [paraphrased: works based on the GPLed program must be
distributed under terms which are no more restrictive than the terms of
the GPL.]
Section 2b. [paraphrased: to publish kghostview, you must do so under
terms which don't allow Troll to relicense Qt mods such that the new
license would conflict with the GPL.]
With each of these clauses, you do have to take other parts of the
license into account. However, there is nothing about section 6 or
about section 2b which lets you ignore any other parts of the license.
> (I note in this regard that the way the GPL is written it makes
> virtually no sense to apply it to a copyright in collective works).
The author of the GPL would appear to disagree with you. Otherwise,
why would section 2 have the text:
... the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of
derivative or collective works based on the Program.
?
> Do not fall into the trap of thinking that the components of the
> collective work itself must be licensed the same way the collective
> work is.
Sure, but in the case of the GPL, there's an explicit requirement that
the license on the components be no more restrictive than the GPL itself.
And the GPL is very clear about what it means if the license on any of
the components is more restrictive than the GPL.
> > I did not agree that X is not licensed under the GPL. I did agree
> > that X is licensed under XFree. I don't know why you have a problem
> > with this.
>
> For the reasons I stated in
> http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-legal-0001/msg00151.html
Example statement with false implications:
... the BSD license says you can modify the source code, it does not
permit you to modify the license. The copyright holder still holds
the copyright to every copy of the work that is created.
With a collective work, there can be more than one copyright holder.
And, therefore, the copyrights which are granted are only the copyrights
granted by all copyright holders.
If one copyright holder doesn't grant rights it doesn't matter that
another copyright holder does grant those rights..
This is why BSD licensed material can be turned into proprietary,
commercial works, such as those advertised at www.f5.com.
> http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-legal-0001/msg00160.html.
Example statement with false implications:
... I suppose you can say that you are distributing the BSD code to me
both under BSD and GPL, and I must comply with both of them. Then I
wonder, but doesn't requiring me to comply with BSD (the advertising
restriction and the copyright notice) require me to violate the GPL?
Ahh, but you may say that is only a technical violation. ...
No clauses from the BSD license were presented which conflicted with
any of the clauses from the GPL.
--
Raul
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