European Directive on Copyright Law (91/EC/250) wrt open source
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/et/dd/docs/1991/31991L0250-ET.doc
this document outlines the circumstances under which copyright
holders effectively forfeit their copyright and the sections that
i wish to draw to your attention are the ones concerning "interfaces"
and "interoperability at interfaces".
under 91/EC/250, interfaces are exempt from copyright law if the
developers of the code and/or hardware will not grant a license
for interoperability purposes.
even reverse engineering is allowed and catered for - but for
interoperation only, not for people to find out trade secrets such
as faster implementations.
the reason why i am bring this up on debian-legal is because there
may come a time when either one open source project approaches another,
or a proprietary company approaches an open source project (controlled
by debian) and requests a license from the copyright holders in
order that their proprietary (or open source project with an
incompatible license) project interoperate with that otherwise
incompatible project.
for example, there may come a time when the debian maintainers of
Xfree86 4.3.x request a license for the updated drivers of the
incompatible Xfree86 4.4.x from xfree86.org.
or there may come a time when a company approaches the samba
team and requests a license for their proprietary file browser
plugin to interoperate with the Network Neighbourhood (which
is presently impossible without shutting down nmbd, which is
also equally impossible)
now, i am aware that a number of open source projects DELIBERATELY
release libraries under the GPL in order to force people to release
their code under the GPL, too.
where such libraries could be construed to have "interfaces", and
where the GPL is used to force a monopoly position, then any company
or open source project with an incompatible license is entitled to
request a compatible license and if they do not receive one they
are entitled to treat the "interface" - i.e. the header files and
effectively the entire library - as not being subject to copyright
law!
in other words, if anyone releases a library under the GPL with the
intention of creating a monopoly situation, they forfeit their
copyright!
so, the reason why i am mentioning all this is so that you will
be forewarned, and can put in place a strategy to deal with such
a situation.
personally, i think it would be extremely sensible to release code,
even if it isn't a library but is a binary suite of packages, under
the LGPL not the GPL.
as you are no doubt aware, the LGPL requires that people making
modifications to the package / library release source code for
such modifications, but the code _using_ that library has no
restrictions or obligations.
this is _exactly_ the sort of thing that is compatible with the
EU directive on copyright law, whereas the GPL most clearly is not.
given that open source projects are becoming significant
development projects in their own right (several man-years and
in some cases man-decades), and that they will or are already
beginning to squeeze out the competition, i forsee circumstances
where GPL'd code will hit monopolies investigations.
l.
--
--
expecting email to be received and understood is a bit like
picking up the telephone and immediately dialing without
checking for a dial-tone; speaking immediately without listening
for either an answer or ring-tone; hanging up immediately and
believing that you have actually started a conversation.
--
<a href="http://lkcl.net";> lkcl.net </a> <br />
<a href="mailto:lkcl@lkcl.net";> lkcl@lkcl.net </a> <br />
Reply to: