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The GPL as a grant of rights, not contractThe GPL as a grant of rights, not contractPosted Dec 12, 2003 4:13 UTC (Fri) by jvotaw (subscriber, #3678)In reply to: Bob Young writes a letter to Darl by danw6144 Parent article: Bob Young writes a letter to Darl You wrote: FSF: Maybe a little contract law ain't such a bad thing after all. The reason the GPL works without being a contract is subtle: it does not affect the user's behavior outside of the scope of the author's copyright on the work. Copyright law gives authors several exclusive rights, including the right to distribute their work and the right to make derivative works. Authors can, entirely at their discretion, grant these rights to other people. The trick is, copyright law allows you to give others only part of your rights, if you so choose. You can give others as large or as small a part of your rights as you want. For example, you might give someone the right to distribute your book, but only on Fridays. Or you might give them the right to make a derivative work, but only if it's a literal translation into Portugese and they clear the translation with you before publication. The GPL works by granting a very specific, thin slice of rights: "I grant you the right to distribute my work, or make derivative works, but only in the case where you grant others the same rights I'm granting you." The rest of the GPL's text is just implementation details. The GPL does not force users to do anything outside of the scope of the original author's copyrights. It does not require users to pay the author money, or refrain from saying bad things about the software, for example. Those things were up to the user's discretion before accepting the license, and afterwards. If an author wanted to affect the user's behavior outside the scope of the rights you're granting them, she'd need a contract. The GPL doesn't go outside of that limited scope so doesn't need to be a contract. This means the GPL is more internationally portable, since copyright law seems to be more uniform in different nations (for good or ill -- thanks, WIPO) than contract law. -Joel
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