GPL compliance

[Daniel Carrera]

On Thu, 2006-29-06 at 15:56 -0700, Gary W. Swearingen wrote:
> > I've already spent a few years. I'm not exactly new to the GPL (but
> > IANAL). The first time I read it was 8 years ago, and I read it very
> > carefully then and I've spent a fair share of time since discussing the
> > legal implications of it, so don't treat me like I'm new to the GPL.
> 
> Sorry, but you seem to not understand the most basic priciples of
> copyright and licensing.  Maybe we can blame it on careless writing.

I think I have a fair understanding (for someone who is not a lawyer) of
copyright law. It's an area of law I'm interested in and have spent time
reading on (as a non-lawyer). Instead of linking to a generic intro to
copyright (I've already read several of those) maybe you can point to
which principle it is which conflicts with what I said about section 3
of the GPL.

Let's go through the basic logic:

* Person A makes a software product and releases it under the GPL. Let's
suppose that person A ships the source and binaries together.
* Person B makes a derivative of that, and wants to distribute it.
Person B can choose to supply the source directly (section 3a) or to
supply an offer to give the sources to any third party for a duration of
3 years (section 3b).
* Let's suppose Person B chooses 3b.
* Person C gets the modified product, and offer from person B. Person C
does not need to go and get a license from person A. This is one of the
objectives of the GPL. Person B has the right to distribute A's work,
modified or not, without any further contact with A (from either B or
C). In the Debian team this is related to the "island" test.
* Person C wants to distribute the product again. Person C can use
section 3c because Percon B gave the product under section 3b. Person C
does not need a separate license from Person A to accomplish this.
Indeed, if Person C did need such a thing, the software would, by
Debian's standards, be considered non-free.


> > That's why I use a distribution that includes only free software.
> 
> You say that as if using free software does absolves you of the legal
> requirements to obey licensing terms regardless of their
> inconvenience.

What the hell are you talking about? I'm saying that the legal
requirements of free software are not so onerous as to require you to
get a separate license from all the original IP holders. Because those
IP holders chose a free license (more specifically, they chose licenses
that allow RE-LICENSING (e.g. by Canonical) without requiring
re-licensees to get a separate license from them), they chose terms that
allow me to redistribute without getting separate permission from each
one of them. I choose a distribution that uses only free software
because free software allows re-licensing without contacting the
original author.


> I note a clear omission of any argument from you that allows you to
> ignore the requirements of _ALL_ of the IP owners.

Perhaps because you are delusional and don't understand I never said
that. Perhaps you can't read. Or perhaps you simply realize that
creating a straw man (that is, replacing what I said by something
different, but which is clearly wrong) is an easy way out of a real
argument. Well, I never said that you can ignore IP requirements, and
clearly nothing in my email suggested that I did. I spent the email
talking about what the requirements are, based on the license. We are
talking about licenses that allow re-licensing and which do not impose
the condition of getting a separate license from the original IP holder
in order for the re-licensing to be valid.


> > And
> > these are not "magic" statements. This is section 3 of the GPL.
> 
> They're no less magic than the last bytes of an MBR or the first bytes
> of an executable.  This is Unix, more or less -- give me a break.

What you just said here makes no sense whatsoever.

> In the quote just above I was refering to the
> single license that you seemed to be worrying about, in unjustified
> priority to all the rest.

If this is your concern (different licenses) then this is what you
should have said, instead of accusing me of not having a clue about
copyright law (btw, it's called copyright law, not licensing law). Other
free software licenses have easier conditions on redistribution than the
GPL does. I am more comfortable with the requirements imposed by those
other licenses. I ask about the GPL because that's the one I want to
know about right now. What I do about the other licenses is quite simply
not your problem.


> > 3(a) is not relevant because Canonical is not relying on it for its CD
> > distribution and nor am I.
> 
> Again, that seems unlikely, and you've again given me no reason to
> believe it.  Be sure to let us know when where you've found their 3b
> "written offer", if you find it.

1. The CD doesn't come with sources. So obviously they are not relying
on 3(a).
2. Several people have already pointed to the written offer on the back
of the CD case.

> BTW, I'm not opining about whether a GPL-based license of, say, Red
> Hat, is satisfied by finding a single publisher like Canonical (who
> derives from Red Hat's IP) that offers copies which use the IP.

Only if Red Hat gives the work to Canonical under a license that allows
Canonical to re-license without requiring a separate recipient license
from Red Hat. In this situation, your only license is with Canonical.
Most software licenses don't allow this, but free software ones do. It
is one of the corner points of free software.

Daniel.
-- 
http://opendocumentfellowship.org
  "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
  unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself.
  Therefore all progress depends on unreasonable men."
        -- George Bernard Shaw