On the 'death penalty' thing [LWN.net]

On the 'death penalty' thing

Posted Feb 1, 2012 20:27 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
In reply to: On the 'death penalty' thing by kripkenstein
Parent article: A tempest in a toybox

You can certainly choose to interpret it as requiring that downloading a new copy grants you a new license, but given that GPLv3 uses almost identical language in a way that makes it clear you *don't* it's difficult to argue that that was the intent of the license authors. But as with all things legal, it's what a court decides that's important here.

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On the 'death penalty' thing

Posted Feb 2, 2012 4:18 UTC (Thu) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually the GPL3 wording, with the FSF's reasons for the wording, support the opposite: The GPL3 wording is there in order to clarify in a precise way what was always intended in the GPL2. There was a lack of clarity in the GPL2 which led to additional explanations in the GPL3.

On the 'death penalty' thing

Posted Feb 2, 2012 14:05 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

From the rationale for the first draft of GPLv3 (http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl-rationale-2006-01-16.html#SECTIO...)

"GPLv2 provided for automatic termination of the rights of a person who copied, modified, sublicensed, or distributed a work in violation of the license. Automatic termination can be too harsh for those who have committed an inadvertent violation, particularly in cases involving distribution of large collections of software having numerous copyright holders. A violator who resumes compliance with GPLv2 would need to obtain forgiveness from all copyright holders, but even to contact them all might be impossible"

GPLv3 doesn't clarify the termination clause. It materially changes it.

On the 'death penalty' thing

Posted Feb 2, 2012 4:19 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (1 responses)

From what I know of Contract law it's not the intent of the author of contract that matters, it's the intent of the parties of the contract that does. It's that "meeting of the minds" that defines the contract, but only when the language is ambiguous.

In theory the author could mean something completely different than both the parties to the contract meant and it wouldn't be the authors interpretation that mattered. The caveat here is that if the two parties to the contract had different intentions, then the Judge is tasked with finding a middle ground and could in theory use the contract authors intentions to reach that point even if it was diametrically opposed to the intentions of both parties. But I don't think it's very common that a contract exists where the two parties to the contract have opposite interpretations to what the contact meant AND the author had a third interpretation that was different to both parties intentions. That would be some brutally awful contract language to reach that point.

a license is not a contract

Posted Feb 2, 2012 4:46 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

Copyright licenses are not contracts, and copyright law is not contract law. In a copyright license there is no "agreement" to be mediated; aside from "fair use", the only intentions that matter are those of the copyright holder. A judge who holds that the violator reasonably misunderstood the license terms can reduce the award accordingly -- after the violator has lost the case.