On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 12:09:28AM -0700, Michael K. Edwards wrote: > On 6/7/05, Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It's not so much projects that are actually around for 35 years. Rather, > > if you maintain a project for, say, three or four years, I reuse large > > chunks of it in my own project, and my project outlives yours. Decades > > later, you (or your heirs) have a change of heart, and revoke the license > > you originally granted to me for your project, which I require to use your > > code in mine. You don't control 50% of my work, but you easily control > > 50% of the work you licensed. If I want my work to remain free, I have > > to excise your code from it--which, decades later, probably won't be > > possible. It's a textbook failure of the "tentacles of evil" test. > > This whole line of argument is a canard based on a failure to research > the meaning of "authorship" under US law. See Aalmuhammed v. Lee ( > http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/cases/202_F3d_1227.htm ), and > observe that the 17 USC 203 termination right is reserved to _authors_ > and their heirs, not contributors of any quantum of expression that > might by itself be copyrightable.
I integrate your MP3 decoding library into my media playing software. The author of the MP3 decoding source code is very clear: you. I can only reuse that library due to the license granted to it. That license is revoked. I can no longer use the MP3 decoder[1]; if it's affected my work enough that I can not excise it from my code (so my work is not a derived work of the library), it's up a creek. This isn't a case of you contributing patches to work that I'm the author of; it's you authoring an independent work, and my integrating your work into mine--one of the most fundamental parts of free software. [1] or, for the nitpickers, "can no longer distribute my work which is derived from the MP3 decoder". -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
