On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 05:29:51PM -0700, John Meacham wrote: > On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 02:24:49PM +0200, Ketil Malde wrote: > > Jamie Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > >> Jamie> "Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program > > > > >> Note that this is NOT a contract; you have no proof that the violator > > >> accepted it. > > > > > You don't have to sign something to make a legally binding agreement. > > > As an extreme, there was a case here in the UK a few years ago in > > > which three men made a purely verbal agreement > > Yes, this is a _major_ misconception about the GPL which a lot of people > seem to make. The GPL is _not_ a contract and does not gain power from > contract law.
Indeed. The GPL is a license, which permits the licensor certain specific rights. In the case of redistribution of derived works, the GPL permits this only if the derived work is also GPLed. Thus contributors have a choice: a) Their contribution is GPLed. b) They are in violation of copyright law. Eben Moglen's position is that we can assume the former: "The GPL only obliges you if you distribute software made from GPL'd code, and only needs to be accepted when redistribution occurs. And because no one can ever redistribute without a license, we can safely presume that anyone redistributing GPL'd software intended to accept the GPL." [1] > A side effect is that the common misconception that the GPL can infect > your code causing it to become GPLed is completly unfounded. it is > impossible for this to happen. What happens is you lose the ability to > distribute the GPLed code. nothing happens to your code, it is still > yours and you can rewrite the offending bits and keep on distributing it > or change your licence or just distribute your parts however you want... Yes, if your code is truly original and you choose option b. In which case you can also be sued for copyright infringement for the copies distributed so far. If however your code is a derived work, then the GPL has in a sense infected it: you can distribute under the GPL or not at all. Anyway, this is rather irrelevant (and off-topic), since in other branches of this thread I conceeded that even if patches are legally derived works, it would likely be prohibitively expensive to confirm that in court. Hence the suggestion of license metadata for those projects which feel the need. -- Jamie Webb [1] http://emoglen.law.columbia.edu/publications/lu-12.html _______________________________________________ darcs-users mailing list [email protected] http://www.abridgegame.org/mailman/listinfo/darcs-users
