GPL vs BSD Licence

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Schwartz [mailto:davids at webmaster.com]
> Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2004 11:02 AM
> To: tedm at toybox.placo.com; chat at freebsd.org
> Cc: TM4525 at aol.com
> Subject: RE: GPL vs BSD Licence
>
>
>

> 	I have, and while I don't bash them, I disagree with many of their
> interpretations

> because they don't seem to reflect any understanding
> whatsoever of copyright law.

What you just said there was a bash.

> I think part of this is because RMS often
> rights about the world the way he wishes it was rather than the way it
> actually is.
>

Or sings about it. ;-)

That statement is a pretty accurate assessment of RMS.

> 	Again, the GPL can only affect a work if someone with legal
> copyright over
> that work decides to apply it. That would mean the authors/owners, unless
> the work could legally be classified as a derivative work of a GPL'd work.
> This is a copyright law technical term that the words of the GPL cannot
> change because its legal authority to affect the work at all comes from
> whether it has or hasn't that particular legal status in the first place.
>

Right, but the argument isn't over whether or not the copyright holder can
exercise control.  The argument is over what constitutes
a derivative work.

Here is another link that tries to answer this:

http://chillingeffects.org/derivative/faq.cgi

The problem is simply that right now there isn't a lot of caselaw out
there regarding what constitutes a derivative work in a software
program.  The FSF has this to say about it here:

http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

"If a library is released under the GPL (not the LGPL), does that mean that
any program which uses it has to be under the GPL?
Yes, because the program as it is actually run includes the library."

But using the examples of derivative work given on the chillingeffects
website, if I were to write a 100,000 line program that linked into a
200 line GPL program, my program probably couldn't be considered a
derivative
work of the library.  About the worst that could happen is my program
might be considered to be infringing the copyright of the copyright
holder of the library - but if that library is written specifically to
let the general public link into it, the copyright holder of the
library would have a hard time trying to justify to the court why
he was allowing some people and not others to link in.

Additionally since libraries aren't programs themselves, they wouldn't
typically be used as a 'starting point' for a new work, further
complicating any effort to consider a program that uses them a
derivative work.

So as you see I do agree with this as a redistribution problem for the
GPL.  But, until the GPL is tested in a court and we get some caselaw
out there, the FSF's interpretation of a derivative work is as they
say, 'not invalid'  And all the reports are that the FSF has been
doing everything possible to settle these cases out of court.

Ted