Examining an attack on the GPL [LWN.net]

Examining an attack on the GPL

Posted Nov 24, 2003 21:43 UTC (Mon) by virtex (subscriber, #3019)
Parent article: Examining an attack on the GPL

So, if a company downloads a GPL product, and incorporates it into the company's product in such a way that the company's product is considered a "derived" work or a work "containing" the downloaded code, not only is the company obligated to use the GPL to distribute its product ...

This is a common mistake I see people make all the time -- assuming that if a proprietary program acquires some GPL code, then the entire program must be relicensed under the GPL. This implies that the GPL supercedes all other licenses, and this is simply not true. The GPL is quite clear about what happens in a case like this. Paragraph 7 of the GPL reads as follows:

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

In other words, if you have included GPL code in your proprietary program, you are not allowed to distribute your program until the conflict is resolved, most likely by removing the offending code. Relicensing the entire codebase under the GPL is also an option, but it's certainly not the only one, and I doubt many corporations would agree to do this. If you have already distibuted your program, you have violated the terms of the GPL; however, there is still nothing that says you are required to GPL your codebase.

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Examining an attack on the GPL

Posted Nov 24, 2003 21:53 UTC (Mon) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]

Hm. The way I understood it: If you are the GPL distributor, _then_ you cannot distribute code to which anyone else has "proprietary" claims, such as a patent, or the purchase of the Unix source code - cough.

However, it does not excuse you from distributing your code under the GPL if it is derived from the GPL'd code of another party - simply because there is no external condition imposed on you that prevents you from distributing under the GPL.

Maybe I am wrong, but the language always seemed clear to me there ...

Just a quick comment.

Posted Nov 25, 2003 0:28 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

I agree with most of what you said here, but there's one part I want to comment on.

"In other words, if you have included GPL code in your proprietary program, you are not allowed to distribute your program until the conflict is resolved, most likely by removing the offending code. Relicensing the entire codebase under the GPL is also an option, but it's certainly not the only one, and I doubt many corporations would agree to do this."

Actually, this has been done. NeXT, for example, released the source for their Objective-C frontend for GCC precisely because of this. There's also the Linksys business, which LWN has covered before; there's still some issues there, but apparently Linksys is trying to do the right thing. I could name more examples, but that would require me to Google for them, and I'm too lazy. :-)

Linksys in a bind

Posted Nov 25, 2003 4:01 UTC (Tue) by emk (subscriber, #1128) [Link]

Yeah, Linksys appears to be trying fairly hard to do the right thing, but they're caught between the GPL and some federal laws mandating that software radios are closed source (so nobody can tamper with them and cause radio interference, which can be dangerous). The last message from the FSF suggested that everybody's trying to find a reasonable solution.