Re: Proposed Apache license & patent/reciprocity issues
Sorry for the late reply, but I was a bit busy.
Anthony DeRobertis said on Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 03:13:59AM -0500,:
> 1. Person A creates a work, and applies the GPL to it. You have a
> license to A's work. You may not have a copy, but you still have
> a license.
> 2. Person B creates a derivative work of A's work. Under 2(b), he
> grants you a license to his changes.
> 3. You violate GPL 4. Your license to both A's and B's works are
> revoked.
> 4. Person C creates a derivative work of A's or B's work. You now
> have a license to C's changes.
> 5. You still can't use A's or B's work.
>
> The only way to gain back your right to use the GPL'd work is to contact
> all the copyright holders and ask for it.
I'm afraid this is not the way the GPL works.
The law, as it stands,does not give you the right to modify, or
distribute a copyrighted work. But, so long as your's is a legal copy
you are free to exercise all fair use rights available to you under
the law of copyright.
The non-free licenses take away even your fair use rights because what
you get is a license, and not a copy itself. You get the fair use
rights when what you have is a copy; when you are _licensed_ a copy,
you get precisely what is licensed to you, nothing more, nothing
less. The GPL uses this technique employed by proprietary licenses to
grant you more rights than what is given by the ordinary copyright
law. GPL #5 takes care of situations where you receive an infringing
copy.
You can violate the GPL only when you try to distribute a work.
without complying with its terms. (modification, without
redistribution, does not attract GPL) Even when you violate the GPL,
you still can continue to use the work itself. That is a wonder of the
law of copyright, not the GPL. The GPL applies ONLY to (a)
modifications, (2) distribution / copying, and (3) distributing
extracts or modified copies. Therefore, you are mistaken in statements
4 and 5 above.
GPL 4 and 5 simply reminds you the effect of law and the provisions of
the GPL.
Again, people receiving derivative works get rights in entire works,
not a license to the derivative works. So, #2 above is a bit off the
mark.
Hope that clears things up.
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