Re: Licenses not in /usr/share/common-licenses
"Thomas Preud'homme" <robotux@celest.fr> writes:
> Are you referring to [1]? Because the full paragraph is about Program's
> source code.
> [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-policy/2000/11/msg00260.html
> " 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source
> code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously
> and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice
> and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to
> this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other
> recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the
> Program."
> To me Program should be read here as "Program in source code form"
Program is explicitly defined in the GPL and that's not what the
definition is.
This License applies to any program or other work which contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below,
refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program"
means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law:
that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it,
either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another
language.
So Program is anything with a notice saying that the GPL applies to it.
And since you're required to preserve such a notice in derivative works as
another one of the requirements in point 1 (which is incorporated into
point 3), all derivative works will have such a notice.
It's not phrased very clearly, certainly. The GPL 3 fixes this. But you
have to split a lot of hairs to convince yourself that Program refers only
to source code distributions. (Which didn't stop people in that
discussion from splitting those hairs, but I didn't find it convincing.)
> As to point 3 referring to points 1, it says:
> " 3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
> under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
> Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the
> following(…)"
> I don't think it means the object code must provide a license, just that
> the program which is redistributed respect points 1 and 2.
Point 3 says that, when distributing the Program, you have to comply with
all of the requirements of point 1. Point 1 says "...and give any other
recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program."
In order to believe that this requirement does not apply, you have to
believe that, because point 1 says "the Program's source code" at the
start, that means that it doesn't apply to distributions of the Program
that are not source code, despite the fact that point 3 explicitly says
that the requirements of point 1 apply. I don't think that's a reasonable
interpretation, since by that reading the statement in point 3 that you
have to follow point 1 is meaningless (it doesn't add any additional
requirements). There's a standard rule in US contract law that says that
you must always favor the interpretation of a contract that does not make
parts of the contract meaningless.
The GPL 3 fixes this ambiguity too, btw, by making it explicit that you
have to distribute a copy of the license with binary works, which is more
evidence of what the intent is.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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