Hi Anthony! On Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:34:27 +0000, "Anthony W. Youngman" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>In section 10 (GPLv3): >> >> 10. Automatic Licensing of Downstream Recipients. >> >> Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically >> receives a license from the original licensors, to run, modify and >> propagate that work, subject to this License. [...] >> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ [skip] >>> Actually, that then totally destroys the whole point of "v3 or later" if >>> you choosing v3 takes away your recipients rights to choose according to >>> the original author's grant! >> >>They are always free to get the program directly from original author >>(put aside the case of a program combined from different sources for a >>moment:-). Then they have a choice of license. > But the law (generally) given the choice between a sensible > interpretation, and an alternative that is either ludicrous or obviously > not what was intended, will *usually* choose the sensible one. Yep, but in this case we have a unequivocal statement in the license. To say that what is written is obviously not what was intended, is, well, quite a stretch IMHO. >>Yet another variation: suppose you licensed your program to Alice >>under BSD and to Bob under GPLv3. Does recipients which get your >>program from Bob get "BSD or GPLv3" or just GPLv3? > Bob's recipients get just GPLv3. That's all he got, that's all he can > pass on. > > To make it even worse, if somebody got one copy from Alice and one from > Bob, Yes, this is even more interesting. > I guess technically they'd have to keep the two copies (and > associated licences) separate unless they contacted me and got my > permission to combine them! I don't think so. Licenses apply to works, not copies. >>> At the end of the day, YOU need a licence to distribute my code. My >>> grant gives you a choice of v2 or v3. Whether you choose v2 or v3, your >>> recipient then gets the same grant as you did, >> >>Sorry, I don't see where it comes from. > Basically, you can choose which licence you want to apply to YOU. But > you pass on my package as a whole (including my permission to choose > which licence). So that's where your recipients get the same choices you > got. I pass your code and GPLv3, there is no requirement to pass your full license grant. >>> and they can also choose v2 or v3. >>> If your choice of v3 took away your recipients choice of v2 I >>> would consider that a VERY retrograde step. >> >>I agree and would be happy to learn where I'm wrong. >> >>> But at the end of the day, it's simple. If I say "v2 or v3" then I >>> granted EVERY recipient of my code the right to *choose*. >> >>Yes, if they receive from you directly. > Or if they receive an UNALTERED copy from you! Because if you change the > licence (which you're not allowed to do) it's not an unaltered copy :-) Please don't not mix licenses and license grants:-) Let's consider it in more details: suppose I distribute your source code non-altered or non-creatively altered (so I don't have any copyright in this work) with GPLv3 attached and all references to other licenses (whether GPLv2 or BSD) stripped. AFAICS it's clearly permitted under clauses 4 and/or 5 of GPLv3. Alexander Cherepanov -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
