Rosen also thinks GPL needs "I agree" click-through [LWN.net]

Rosen also thinks GPL needs "I agree" click-through

Posted Jul 27, 2004 21:18 UTC (Tue) by nealr (guest, #23499) [Link]

piman:

No one except the copyright holder of a particular pieces of software can decide the incompatibility of a particular license with another.

So if I write GPL'd software and chose to include OSL licensed software in it... that it 100% kosher.

RMS's opinon on the matter is 100% irrelevant if I hold the copyright to the GPL'd software. This is basic copyright law, a thirt part can't tell you how to interpret/enforce a license to your own code.

RMS's opinion on incompatibility only matters to software the FSF owns copyright to.

If I remeber right, RPM is copyight Red Hat... so Red Hat gets to decide compatibility w.r.t elfutils.

Of course Debian is free to decide whatever it wishes to for it's onw distro... but you can't claim that something is illegal to distribute if you have no copyrights to the code in question.

Rosen also thinks GPL needs "I agree" click-through

Posted Jul 27, 2004 21:43 UTC (Tue) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

No, incompatibility is the function of the licenses and grants involved, not of the copyright holder. But the copyright holder can solve incompatibilities by granting more permissions.

You can write GPLd software and include OSLd software in it. You can even distribute it, assuming you hold all the copyrights. But given the licenses you've granted to other people (GPL one part, OSL another), *they* can't legally distribute it to other people, because following the terms of the OSL violates the terms of the GPL (and possible vice versa).

For it to be further distributable, you need to grant permission to violate the terms of the GPL that conflict with the OSL, or vice versa. It can be argued that your initial distribution is implicit permission, yes, but I and many others find that a legally unsafe position. Therefore, the usual way to do it is with exception clauses, like you find on GPLd software linked to OpenSSL.

RMS's opinion is irrelevant, yes; the license texts themselves are not.

Rosen also thinks GPL needs "I agree" click-through

Posted Jul 27, 2004 22:55 UTC (Tue) by nealr (guest, #23499) [Link]

OK.. I agree with that. It would put other down-the-line distributors in a tenuous position....

But, that is somewhat trumped by the fact that only the copyright holder has any standing to enforce a license, and if they are distributing code with multiple licenses that some pointy-headed lawyer decides conflict in some meaningless way.... the down-the-line distributors have nothing to fear (except their own paranoia) since the copyright holders distributed it themselves. (This was your point... but I would say that you are worrying too much).

It's good practice to put in the exceptions.

Which begs the question of why RMS decided NOT to put an exception in the GPL allowing the 4-clause BSD license to be compatible. I think it was his own hubris and personal agenda.

The advertizing clause is hardly an undue burden. If you are writing a paper and you want to reference another, you must properly attribute it. Same concept. As to why RMS decided that proper attribution is against free-software is beyond me.

Rosen also thinks GPL needs "I agree" click-through

Posted Jul 28, 2004 0:22 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

It's not just "good practice", it's legally required for the exception to be there if you don't want to be tacitly infringing upon copyright. And the licenses don't conflict in meaningless ways; the OSL is a shitty license, and imposes way more restrictions than the GPL, it's not nearly as trivial as the BSD advertising clause.

> the down-the-line distributors have nothing to fear (except their own paranoia) since the copyright holders distributed it themselves. (This was your point... but I would say that you are worrying too much).

Let's say 5, 10, 20 years from now, Red Hat goes bankrupt. Someone buys the copyrights off of them, and pulls another SCO. Except this time, they actually own copyrights, and people actually are violating the terms of the licenses. Having the exceptions be explicit protects you from this.

As for the rest of your post, you seem misinformed about what the BSD advertising clause actually involves. The 3-clause BSD license is GPL-compatible, and the GPL actually allows you a far more annoying credit option via 2c. The advertising clause (the 4th clause, if you find an old copy of the license) is about advertising, not about credit. It's also thought that it's probably not legal to include in a copyright license, since it affects entirely unrelated works.

Rosen also thinks GPL needs "I agree" click-through

Posted Jul 28, 2004 0:25 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

Actually, I'm wrong; it's been so long since I've seen a 4 clause BSD license that I misremembered the numbering.

In a 4 clause BSD license, the 3rd clause is the advertising clause. The 3 clause BSD license is the 4 clause BSD license minus the 3rd clause. The 2 clause BSD license is the 4 clause BSD license minus the 3rd and 4th clauses.

Rosen also thinks GPL needs "I agree" click-through

Posted Jul 28, 2004 0:15 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

I just downloaded the source to RPM from http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/2/SRPMS/rpm-4.3.1-0.3.src.rpm. (Incidentally, it's very difficult to find RPM 4.3's source, and I couldn't find it at all in non-RPM form.) I also grabbed RPM 4.2 from RH9.

RPM 4.2's libelf is pretty clearly under the OSL; every file in rpm-4.2/elfutils/libelf has an OSL header, and rpm-4.2/elfutils/COPYING is a copy of the OSL. So, distributing Fedora Core 1 infringes on Red Hat's copyright, which IMO is more than enough to justify the "Larry Rosen considered harmful" comments above, and a serious problem on Red Hat's part for not checking licenses before releasing.

RPM 4.3 does not include elfutils/libelf, so I got it separately (again from FC2). Now I find that libelf is licensed under the GPL (hooray). However, other parts of elfutils are licensed under the OSL and link to libelf. So now, RPM is fine; it's just all the rest of elfutils that can't be distributed. The exact software causing the problem has changed, but the nature of the problem hasn't.