Preface: I am sorry, but it seems that you don't know much about
Copyright issues :-( Many of your statements are completely
wrong and none of your mails from the last night has been helpful.
For a decent discussion on this topic it is important that we use
correct verbalizations. Unfortunately, the English language is not
very precise here....
Let me first quote a dictionary:
German English
========= ===========
Urheberrecht Copyright
Verwertungsrechte Copyright
Nutzungsrecht Rights of use
As you see, the English language does not make a distinction between
Urheberrecht & Verwertungsrecht. As this is _very_ important for a correct
discussion, I will use the following translation:
German English
========= ===========
Urheberrecht Authorship rights
Verwertungsrechte Utilization rights
Nutzungsrecht Rights of use
In all my future statements. Please also note the order:
Authorship rights This is the legal matter with the higest priority.
It may never be transferrred. For this reason
something called "public domain" is illegal!
As this is the primary right, all other rights below
are derived rights and of lower importance.
Authorship rights protect a "work".
They do _not_ protect the rights of the author of
code snipplets and minor contributions.
-> cumulative ownership.
If a minor part owned by others is connected
to a (in majority) bigger piece that you own
and this is done in a way that it makes no
sense or is impossible to to divide,
ownership is transferred to you.
If you go to gas station and fill up gas into
your tank _all_ gas will be owned by you
unless your tank was _completely_ empty before.
Every drop of the external gas will connect
to much bigger amount of gas n your tank already
owned by you and thus turns into gas onwed by
you for this reason.
Utilization rights The rights that are of importance for licensing and
sub-licensing.
Utilization rights may be transferred to another
person. However this does not include the Author's
right from keeping a private copy or from giving
away an Authors's copy. A second contract may
forbid the author to give away an Authors's copy.
If you did give away all Utilization rights to another
person and this person does not utilize the code
within 2 years, the author may write a letter to this
person to transfer back all rghts without a fee.
Contributors of code snipplets and minor contributions
have no right to specify legal usage. However, they
have the right to be payed an apropriate percentage
of the income created by the Utilization rights on the
software. For software that is given away for free,
this means that they will receive an apropriate
percentage of zero income.
Rights of use Rights to use the SW do not include any right to copy
except for own backup purposes.
>From: "Mike A. Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>>However, if you publish something under a modified GPL, ie one
>>without the "viral" component, then as far as I can see it would be
>>possible. This would however change the license terms for the rest
>>of cdrdao as well (it would effectively turn into an LGPL license I
>>think).
>The thing that sucks about that, is that to change the cdrdao
>license would require that everyone who has ever contributed GPL
>code to the project, agree to the license change, or have
>previously agreed to assign all copyright ownership of the
>contributed code to the original author.
This is only needed for _major_ contributions.
Nobody contributes GPL code to a project but just code.
Legal rights for the contributed code depend on the amount compared to the
whole project.
>That's a good thing or a bad thing depending on your viewpoint.
>Some people view it as a bad point, because even if you write a
>program and GPL it, you cannot legally change the license on your
>own code, or multiple license it, unless all code contributors
>have agreed to the relicense/multi-license, or have assigned
>their copyright completely to you.
Wrong!
If there is an author who owns the authorship rights for the work
(like it is true for me with e.g. cdrecord), this author is the
only person who may decide on authorship right issues.
As libscg is a major contribution from me to the cdrdao project,
I would be able to put a veto on this. But as I already did allow
cdrecord to be linked with libedc it is obvious that I don't use my
veto right here.
>Others view it as a good thing, because if you GPL a program, and
>then allow many contributors to contribute, if they decide to
>keep their copyright for any patches, then what happens is the
>more contributors that have contributed to the code, the more
>impossible it is to ever change the license away from the GPL.
In general this is wrong. Cdrecord has a lot of contributors but
the vast majority of the code has been written by me so I am the only
person who is allowed to decide about Utilization rights.
However for projects like the Linux kernel it is not an easy deal...
There is just no single author but a lot of authors.
>In this manner, the GPL is self-protecting, in order to protect
>software freedom, by not allowing license change. Others however
>such as Microsoft, view this as "viral licensing", because once
>you've done it, it can be difficult, if not impossible to ever
>change the license of a software project that is GPL'd.
Wrong: GPL is not self protecting in your means.
>The Linux kernel for example probably has 5000 or more
>contributors. I doubt it'll ever change licenses. ;o)
This is true, but this is a exception and does not apply for many
open source projects.
J�rg
EMail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home) J�rg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix
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