Copyright Assignment Meh [LWN.net]

Copyright Assignment Meh

Posted Nov 10, 2010 5:21 UTC (Wed) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281)
In reply to: Copyright Assignment Meh by martinfick
Parent article: LPC: Michael Meeks on LibreOffice and code ownership

> Perhaps they could get it somewhere else (assuming they even know that they can, and that it is still available somewhere else), but that only addresses some of the freedoms that the GPL gives, non copyleft covered ones. You are not addressing all of the freedoms, yet you claim you that they can all be addressed. I am saying "you cannot get B, C, and D", and you keep replying: "yes you can, you can get A!"

I don't follow. What are B,C,D here? As I understand it, if they get the GPL source from someplace else, they get all the freedoms of the GPL with that source - what is the mising B,C,D?

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Posted Nov 10, 2010 6:23 UTC (Wed) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

> I don't follow. What are B,C,D here? As I understand it, if they get the GPL source from someplace else, they get all the freedoms of the GPL with that source - what is the mising B,C,D?

But they don't get those freedoms on the same program then. If they are given program P under a proprietery license (program P is a modified version of program Q which I distribute), which includes the code I released under the GPL, and they get the source to program Q under the GPL from somewhere else, it does not mean that they get the freedoms of the GPL for program P (since program P is different from Q).

The missing B, C, D could be anything that is covered by the GPL. If I had to assign them each an important missing freedom, I would note B as: the right to modify program P (as I already pointed out in my example), also I would note C as: the right to the source of program P, and D as: the right to redistribute program P. If B, C, D and are restricted by the proprietary relicense of program P, the receiver will not get those freedoms on P, they will only get them on Q.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but perhaps you are not familiar with the concept of copyleft? I would suggest reading these pages, perhaps they will clarify some things that I am attempting (poorly I guess) to convey:

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html

Posted Nov 10, 2010 6:42 UTC (Wed) by kripkenstein (subscriber, #43281) [Link]

> But they don't get those freedoms on the same program then.

Ok, fine, then we basically agree on all the facts. We're just confusing ourselves with language.

I care that they *can* get all those freedoms for that source code - they might need to get it from somewhere else though. You care about getting those freedoms for the actual program they receive. Neither of us is right or wrong, just different focus.

> Please don't take this the wrong way, but perhaps you are not familiar with the concept of copyleft?

Actually I've been advocating for copyleft, and writing copylefted code, for quite a long time now :)

Posted Nov 10, 2010 17:36 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

>I care that they *can* get all those freedoms for that source code - they might need to get it from somewhere else though

They can get all of those freedoms if the code is released under a BSD license, so why choose the GPL in the first place if you don't care about the copyleft terms that the GPL adds?

Posted Nov 10, 2010 18:42 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Indeed even has contributors to a GPL or proprietary licensed codebase, as an individual contributor you can offer your contributions under a more liberal license such as BSD and a project should be able to accept them even if they don't require copyright assignment. If your personal politics are such that the terms of the GPL( or proprietary licensing) are too restrictive for you, then you are still free to offer your original work under a more expansive license such as the BSD and a GPL( or proprietary) project can consume those contributions without issue even in situations where they later feel a re-license is necessary. BSD licensed contributions should present no insurmountable problems even in a re-licensing situation.

-jef