Hi Stephan,
On Sat, 8 Jan 2022, Stephan Lachnit wrote:
Let's just quickly ignore the separate user agreement thing and read
G4SL #4 again:
"You are under no obligation to provide anyone with any modifications
of this software that you may develop, including but not limited to
bug fixes, patches, upgrades or other enhancements or derivatives of
the features, functionality or performance of this software. If you
publish or distribute your modifications you are deemed to have
granted all Members and all Copyright Holders of the Geant4
Collaboration a license to your modifications, including modifications
protected by any patent owned by you, under the conditions of this
license."
So I can:
a) modify the code, and
b) license my patches in any way I want.
In case I publish my modifications I must:
c) allow the [Copyright Holders of Geant4] to license my patch also
under the G4SL.
Related to c), maybe it is a language thing, but I don't allow others to
publish my patch but I am forced to publish my patch under a second
license, namely G4SL, to the [Copyright Holders of Geant4].
If I don't like that license and would rather use only a more open
license, I am not allowed to do this as I can not fulfill the user
agreement thing. From my point of view this is some kind of
discrimination or restriction.
Two observations:
a) The clause applies to the user documentation, but not the software
itself. It read it as "if any user documentation is included with a
redistribution, it must include the following notice", i.e. if no user
documentation is shipped, there is no need to add that sentence. So no
need to add to your patch that it was developed by the Geant4
collaboration.
Shouldn't any patch be accompanied by a description about its purpose?
Wouldn't you say that this is documentaion?
b) Also, the statement notes "This product includes software developed
by [...]", note the *includes*. This is simply a state of fact and
makes no assumptions about all the copyright that applies to the
software.
But my patch does only contain software developed by myself. It doesn't
feel right being forced to mention that others developed it.
Hm. I guess here pops the "what does modified mean" question up again
(greeting from d-p). I don't think distributing a binary with a tiny
fix is a "modified form", but I can see how lawyers may see that
differently.
This is another reason to avoid that license. But you are right, there
exist suprising court decisions related to modifications.
Thorsten
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