Re: Linux and GPLv2
On Sunday 13 March 2005 02:12 pm, Måns Rullgård wrote:
> It's also rather interesting how people, apparently without much
> reflection, release code under terms, the interpretation of which is as
> yet undefined. Given the grayness of these legal areas, and the lack
> of prior case-law, the outcome of a court case concerning the GPL
> could be just about anything.
>
> Although it is often the case, that the choice is between releasing
> under terms that might be overthrown, or altered, by a court, and not
> releasing at all, simply taking the statements from the FSF regarding
> interpretations about the GPL, such as the GPL FAQ, at face value,
> must be regarded as somewhat misguided. Since this is the
> interpretation the FSF would want to see, and wishes were possible,
> they are quite unlikely to make any statements to the contrary. At
> the very least, someone contemplating releasing his code under the
> GPL, should review some independent analysis of its terms, even if the
> the GPL FAQ seems compelling.
Well, there are lots of good reasons to have as many FOSS works under one
single license as possible. As a matter of policy, FOSS works well because
there are very low transaction costs to share work between developers.
Outside of the FOSS world it takes a dozen lawyers to allow two developers to
share work... its inefficient and to be avoided (that's the main thinking
behind Collective Commons).
As for grey areas, there are fewer than you might think. There is a lot of
chatting going on between lots of involved groups as to what one clause of
the GPL means in very particular situations. While of all of it is quite
fascinating, I suggest they are not the questions that matter to the vast
majority of developers. So long as everyone sticks with the GPL, then
everything is okay. This was the intent of the GPL... efforts to introduce
non-GPLed work into the GPL code base is supposed to be hard to encourage
developers to write GPLed replacements.
> We should certainly try to respect the wishes of the copyright holder,
> wherever possible, but this is only an act of politeness, and not
> necessarily something we are forced to do by law. The situation gets
> still more complicated when non-FSF authors use the GPL for their
> work. I find it somewhat difficult to believe that all the authors of
> various little libraries would mind much if someone linked an
> application with both their library and OpenSSL, for instance. I was
> myself not aware of these issues when I first started writing
> software, and released some things under the GPL. As soon as I
> learned about the problems, I moved to other licenses.
I'm not quite certain what you mean here, but in the copyright world the
wishes of the copyright holder are the law. If the copyright holder is only
granting you the license under certain terms, than those terms are law and
quite enforceable. If there is a "difference of opinion" between the
licensor and the licensee as to what those terms are, well... that's when
things get quite a bit more interesting :)
--
Sean Kellogg
2nd Year - University of Washington School of Law
GPSS Senator - Student Bar Association
Editor-at-Large - National ACS Blog [http://www.acsblog.org]
c: 206.498.8207 e: skellogg@u.washington.edu
So, let go
...Jump in
...Oh well, what you waiting for?
...it's all right
...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown
Reply to: