Re: GPLv3 suggestion to solve KDE/QT problem and others
On Sun, Feb 20, 2000 at 08:04:10PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
[discussing the concept that some people call "viral"]
> > I think you're referring to the GPL property I think of as transitive
> > rights. [As in "transitive closure", not "transitive verb".]
On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 05:34:47AM +0200, Adi Stav wrote:
> Aren't the restrictions transitive as well? IANAL...
Copyright law defaults to complete restriction. Licenses grant rights
("copy" rights) to others. Thus restrictions simply a failure to grant
certain rights.
So restrictions are always transitive: you can't grant a right that you
don't have.
The GPL is somewhat unique in that it makes any extra restriction
equivalent to complete restriction. Where most copyrights allow
redistribution under more limited rights, the GPL does not.
Thus, the GPL is about as close as you can get to restrictions not
being transitive.
> > The QPL *requires* that you allow the original author to re-release
> > it under any other license that the original author chooses. This
> > can be as proprietary or restrictive as the original author chooses.
> > Needless to say, if you don't have the authority to grant this kind
> > of copyright you can't incorporate someone else's code into a QPL
> > mod. [And this is the biggest conflict between the QPL and the GPL.]
>
> Hmm. Reusing code between different licenses is not the issue... There
> are many compatibility problems between licenses. But not even to be
> able to reuse code between software that use the same license seems
> problematic to me. You are right *hit forhead with palm*, the QPL is
> not a Free license because it does not allow code reuse. It is strange
> that DFSG does not mention code reuse anywhere. This should be after
> "Derived Works":
That's because code reuse wasn't seen as a relevant issue for
building a distribution. The DFSG is simply an attempt to define our
minimal requirements to maintain a piece of software as a part of our
distribution.
> Code Reuse
> The license must allow combining different works or parts
> of works distributed under the same license, and must allow
> them to be distributed under the same terms as the license
> of the original works.
>
> Then WHY did the FSF approve the QPL? Harmony was already on its
> way...
Harmony was dropped, by the people who were writing it, when Troll
claimed that they were going to solve the GPL incompatability issues.
Unfortunately, if the QPL is supposed to represent that solution, Troll
lied about what they were going to do. [Then again, I hadn't archived
any exact quotes -- perhaps they only lied by implication.]
> > > > DFSG allows proprietary licenses. GPL does not.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure what you mean by that... Of course DFSG doesn't allow
> > > proprietary licenses.
> >
> > I don't know why you bother saying that you don't know what I mean
> > at the same time you contradict me. You should at least explain
> > what you mean...
>
> I was responding to what I thought was the most likely meaning of what
> you said, which was that DFSG allowed proprietary licenses.
Well, I consider the QPL to be a proprietary license, for example...
> > > Its very goal is to define what's Free and what's proprietary (unless
> > > you're using a different definition of "free"). The QPL is considered
> > > Free by all of DFSG, OSD (irrelevant here) and the FSF. I can't think
> > > of any other important Free Licenses definitions.
> >
> > Each Free License is itself a Free License definition of sorts (based
> > on what other licenses can be combined in a work). The BSD license
> > defines a very relaxed sort of freedom which just means that the author
> > gets credit for their work. The GPL defines a much more specific sort
> > of freedom which guarantees that developers can continue to work on
> > whatever forks they choose. Etc.
>
> When looking at things from this angle... The problem of GPL
> incompatibility with other licenses (not necessarily the QPL) results
> from the GPL's definition of Freedom being different from that of the
> DFSG (or the FSF or whatever). Were the definitions identical there
> would be no "Free but GPL-incompatible" licenses listed on the FSF's
> license page. Is this the case? If so, would you say the GPL is too
> strict or the FSF too relaxed?
The GPL existed for something like a decade before the DFSG came into
existence.
I believe that what the FSF mean by "Free but GPL-incompatible" is
code which can be distributed non-commercially in source code, even
though there's some sort of other restriction on it.
> > > > Perhaps you're thinking of authoring a GPL-like license which allows
> > > > any DFSG software to be combined?
> > >
> > > That could indeed be useful but is not what I had in mind. I did mean
> > > upgrading the GPL.
> >
> > I hope you understand that I think of what you're suggesting as
> > downgrading the GPL.
> >
> > If you were really thinking of taking a license and adding more guarantees
> > of freedom you'd be talking about the LGPL -- or, if its protections aren't
> > strong enough for you, you'd be talking about upgrading it so that those
> > protections are stronger.
> >
> > Instead you're talking about weakening the GPL so that it can be legally
> > used in conjunction with QPLed software without getting proper permission
> > from the original authors.
>
> If the QPL (or any other non-GPL license) is considered a Free
> license, this shouldn't be a problem. The way I see it the original
> authors already gave the FSF a permission to do such things when they
> gave users a permission to use any later version of the GPL with their
> software.
I think you should read a bit more about what the Free Software Foundation
is trying to do. There are a number of pages under the "Why we exist"
at the www.fsf.org site which should be explain those issues to you.
The comments in the essay on the Netscape license are somewhat relevant
to the QPL.
Also, I should point out that the FSF is not associated with Debian,
except as an upstream author. Talk about changing the GPL doesn't
really belong on debian-legal...
--
Raul
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