GPL compliance

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera at zmsl.com> writes:

> On Sat, 2006-01-07 at 10:00 -0700, Gary W. Swearingen wrote:
>> If Daniel doesn't have Red Hat's permission (AKA license) to the
>> copyrights that Red Hat owns for parts of the Linux kernel, then
>> Daniel may not legally (re)publish it as he is planning to do.
>
> You still haven't gotten your head around the concept of re-licensing
> and the GPL? For someone who professes to understand copyright law as
> much as you do, you really haven't grasped the basics of the GPL. If Red
> Hat gives Linus a patch under the GPL, Linus can redistribute it (ie.
> re-license) under the GPL. Canonical then gets it under the GPL, and
> gives it to me under the GPL (ie. re-licenses it). And once again, I can
> give it to someone else under the GPL (ie. re-license it again).
> Canonical doesn't need to get a separate permission from Red Hat, and
> neither do I, because we both got it from someone who had permission to
> redistribute it under the GPL.

It doesn't matter who you got your copy from.  What matters is who's
rights you are using.  Canonical has the right to give you copies, but
they don't have the right to give you permission to use Red Hat's IP.
Only Red Hat can do that.  Reread clause 6:

   ...the recipient automatically receives a license from the original
   licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these
   terms and conditions. ...

The original licensor, in one case, is Red Hat.  You receive a license
from Red Hat, subject to T & C.

>> The text of the GPL used by Red Hat for the GPL'd IP in
>> question give terms and conditions for getting and keeping that
>> permission.
>
> The GPL does not have any entry on how to "get" permission. The GPL *is*
> permission to redistribute and re-license; which means that Canonical
> and I don't need to contact RH or even actually get the binary from RH
> at all. All that we need is to get it from someone who has permission to
> re-license that binary to us (e.g. Linus Tovalds).

It seems you're hung up on "get".  Read clause 5 carefully.  You don't
have permissions until you accept the licenses and you accept them
when you modify or distribute (its terms) the software.  That's how
you "get" permission from each and all of the software's owners.

Nobody's talking about contacting RH; that's why they used a general
public license, in this case the GNU one.

>> Repeat for all other GPL-using owners and similarly for owners who use
>> other licenses like X's.  Of course, nobody has the time to actually
>> do all of this.
>
> Nobody has the *need* to do all of this. There is no legal requirement
> to contact the original IP owners because those IP owners gave other
> people the right to re-license their work. I'd think you would have
> gotten your head around the concept of relicensing by now.

You've dreamed up this "contact" business.  RH has already made their
offer to license.  You need only accept it and follow T & C to make
the deal work.  I'm really sorry that you don't understand better how
multiple-owner software licensing works.  The GPL's use of the term
"sublicensing" only refers to the common practice of licensing OSS
derivatives where the deriver is the only party who hasn't already
offered a license on his IP in the derivative and so does so, call it
what you will. (I just call it licensing, which few will confuse with
the sub-licensing by agent sort of thing.  Look up "agency" in a 
law dictionary for more info.)

I believe it to be a sad fact that some developers share your
misunderstanding and claim a single-(re-)license (oh, say GPL) and its
coverage of an entire derivative when parts of it are owned by someone
else who uses a different license.  Say some presumptively GPL'd
program which uses the bdb library which permits such use, but not
such claims.  Other developers, of course, do manage to note that
their derivatave includes the bdb library and provide it's copyright
claim, if not a copy of it's license.  I hope you can see the folly of
your re-licensing concept.  (Unless you believe that the GPL actually
does cover the originally non-GPL parts, a whole 'nother argument.)

> Geez!

Amen and amen.