Oh, my darling flamefest :-)

Posted May 16, 2006 15:29 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

Hello Professor Moglen.

I am a Systems Developer in Minas Gerais' State Assembly, Brasil. Our
(public) organization makes extensive use of Free Software, and is slowly
but certainly pushing for a generalized use of Free Software in our State,
which is the third economy in our country, behind only the states of Rio
de Janeiro and São Paulo.

I have also had a two-year legal training, and a two-year experience as a
paralegal in a District Attorney's office. During my service as a
paralegal, I have helped research for two criminal cases of copyright
infringement.

I am writing this, as suggested by Bruce Perens, to call to your attention
the ambiguous language in the GPLv3 draft, clause #0, "caput", which I
quote (reference numbers between [] are mine, of course):

0. Definitions.
A "licensed program" means any program or other work distributed under
this License. The "Program" refers to any such program or work, and [1]
a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any [2]
derivative work under copyright law: [3] that is to say, [4] a work
containing the Program or a portion of it, either modified or unmodified.
[5] Throughout this License, the term "modification" includes, without
limitation, translation and extension. [6] A "covered work" means either
the Program or any work based on the Program. Each licensee is addressed
as "you".

The ambiguous language I refer to is the complex sentence that begins in
the reference marked [1] and ends in the reference [5] (a "work based on
the Program" means ... unmodified). This sentence tries to define "a work
based on the Program" as [2] "any derivative work under copyright law",
but then uses the explicative expression [3] "that is to say" to equate
[2] "any derivative work under copyright law" with [4] "a work containing
the Program or a portion of it, either modified or unmodified" ... which
is clearly untrue in most, if not all, jurisdictions.

I have entered some comments in the draft wiki, and my suggestions are
basically:

(1) eliminate the "that is to say ... unmodified" ([3] .. [5]) part
altogether; or

(2) substitute [3] .. [6] for: << a derivative work under copyright law,
in most jurisdictions, is the result of any intelligent, non-automated,
intellectually-novel transformation over an original work; this usually
includes extensions, corrections, editions, translations to other
languages, as well as many other types of modifications. >>

I hope this issue is cleared in the new version of the GPL, because this
language, that also occurs in the GPLv2, is the source of a great deal of
uncertainty that hinders the widespread usage of GPL'd software.

I thank you very much for all the great work you have done to further the
cause of Free Software, and for the attention I am certain this matter
will get,

Humberto Massa