Re: GPL, "license upgrades", and the obligation to offer source code
On Tue, May 10, 2005 at 08:49:22AM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote:
> Gentle reader, if you're gonna read this at all, go get a big cup of
> coffee and your fine-print-complex-grammar glasses. I wax prolix at
My question was simple and carefully reduced to a single sentence. Even very
complex issues on this list are typically able to be described in a page or
two; your response is over six pages on my terminal, beyond my free time.
The amount of time I'm willing to invest in a particular argument is also
dependent upon how strong I believe the argument to be--I'm not going to
invest the time to read that much properly unless I believe the argument
is going to be well-grounded enough to be worth it. I don't get that
impression, in general, from very long responses to very concise questions.
(As a side-note, "complex grammar" means, to me, "easily misinterpreted";
it's not a good thing. Long responses make it harder to find what's
important, and--as we've seen--encourage equally long responses.)
I'm going to respond to the initial case only; if you can practice brevity
(a few paragraphs), more than two or three people might have time to read it
all. Sorry. :) I think understanding the paragraph I've isolated might
help me understand your objection to the GPL's clause, as used in the GPL,
however.
(Sorry for the long preamble that borders on mild hypocrasy--the number
of 20k responses I've had to skip on this topic has been building, and I
do think you'll find people much more receptive to arguments if they don't
take half an hour to read. :)
> Then suppose that FormGen publishes DNPL v3 containing a clause to the
> effect of "copyright holders on derivative works of any version of
> Duke Nukem grant FormGen an exclusive license to publish their works
> commercially". FormGen can then gather up all of the extant Duke
> Nukem scenarios, "upgrade" their license to DNPL v3, and exploit them
> commercially as DN3D scenarios.
Those licensors (the scenario creators) chose to allow FormGen to do this.
They were free, if they wished, to remove the "upgrade clause" and only
allow their work to be published under the terms of v1 or v2 of the license,
without the option to upgrade to the not-yet-existant v3. Instead, they
chose to allow FormGen to offer alternative licenses at their whim.
I don't see the problem. It's licensors giving a third party a blank
check. It's up to the licensor to decide whether or not doing that is
a good idea in their particular scenario.
(The rest is parenthetical, partly intended to highlight any underlying
assumptions that might cause us to talk past each other.)
I'm not sure that a license would be non-free if the clause can't be removed:
there's disagreement--IBMPL?--as to whether a license that says something
like "... must include the source with all binary distribution [GPL-like],
unless you're FooSoft"--that is, a license that forcibly grants extra
permissions to one entity--but let's not get into that debate just now,
since the GPL's upgrade clause can be removed. (I don't know if the DNPL's
clause can be, but if it can't, it's not the same case--I'm interested,
for the moment, in "optional upgrade clauses"--optional for both licensor
and licensee, as in the GPL.)
Of course, a license that has a *forced* upgrade clause is clearly non-free
and probably unenforcable, eg. "... and I can change these terms at will
at any time, period", but that's not the case here.
--
Glenn Maynard
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