GPLv3 & additional permissions/restrictions [LWN.net]

GPLv3 & additional permissions/restrictions

Posted Sep 26, 2006 11:21 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: GPLv3 & additional permissions/restrictions by mingo
Parent article: Some GPLv3 clarifications from the FSF

"" What would be fair was if the process of "extensions" was fundamentally symmetric (fair): if i could take any GPLv3 code and incorporate it back into my GPLv3+permissions project. That would be fully democratic: the success of the projects would be the metric of what permissions are the best. Not the unequal playing rules hardcoded into the license."" So following your logic wouldn't that make ALL GPLv3 code essentially "GPLv3 + permissions" pretty much automaticly? And how would it be democratic to force authors who may want their code to be "GPLv3 pure" and have other people make it "GPLv3 + permissions"? Maybe I am just tired, but none of that realy makes sense to me. What they are stating in the the license seems to me just clarification on how copyright licensing law works rather then a additional restriction, subtle manipulation, or "pressure". Even if they left the sentence out of the license which you qouted it would still absolutely work that way. In other words it is simple "clarification". You can take any code and make it GPL or incorporate it into GPL programs as long as the original license does not impose any additional restrictions. You can take 'BSD licensed' code and incorporate it into a GPL'd program, but those BSD authors can't turn around and make GPL'd code from that program and license it BSD code without consent from all the relevent copyright holders, correct? Same thing with MIT and a dozen other licenses.

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GPLv3 & additional permissions/restrictions

Posted Sep 26, 2006 11:35 UTC (Tue) by mingo (subscriber, #31122) [Link]

So following your logic wouldn't that make ALL GPLv3 code essentially "GPLv3 + permissions" pretty much automaticly? And how would it be democratic to force authors who may want their code to be "GPLv3 pure" and have other people make it "GPLv3 + permissions"? Maybe I am just tired, but none of that realy makes sense to me.

yes, that's my point - it makes no sense either way. There's just no solution i can see at all but to get all developers in the GPL ecosystem agree - anything else will result in inequality on either the "restrictive" (pure) side or on the "permissive" side.

The reason for that inequality is that in an assymetric licensing model there's just no technical way to determine who put how much effort into some code, hence there is simply no mechanism to be fair - the only solution is equal treatment.

I see the GPLv2 as a pretty well working "agreement" that isnt perfect but seems to unify alot of people who ended up writing a body of code that currently consists of 300+ million lines of code and who are currently producing tens of millions of new lines of code per year. Trend: "accelerating exponentially". I'd be very, very careful to mess with that powerful machinery.

GPLv3 & additional permissions/restrictions

Posted Sep 26, 2006 19:38 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

I think that how it is stated in GPLv3 is how GPLv2 works right now.

Say I modify a GPLv2 and add some permissions. Now that's not GPL proper anymore, but basicly it's the the same thing as saying GPLv2 + permissions.

Now that code is still GPL compatable and a person can strip away those permissions and use it in a "GPLv2" proper. The original author now can't turn around and use code from that GPLv2 proper program and add permissions without special agreement with the copyright holders.

So that is the way the GPLv2 works right now, is it not?

Isn't this part of the 'viral' nature of the GPL and the sort of thing people having to work with 'GPL compatable' licenses have to deal with on a regular basis?

To me it's no difference between GPLv2 and GPLv3 in this regard. I think that this GPL+permissions language was added to make the GPL to be more 'universal' and work the same way in more countries as it works in the U.S. or most places in Europe. Different countries may not interprete the GPL in the same way as their copyright laws maybe different or they use different conventions. But you'd have to ask the FSF people about that.