Hyman Rosen wrote: [...] > They're licenses that grant extra rights to people who
http://www.ipinfoblog.com/archives/Open%20Source%20Legal%20Issues.pdf LEGAL ISSUES IN OPEN SOURCE AND FREE SOFTWARE DISTRIBUTION1 RAYMOND T. NIMMER 1 This materials have been adapted from Chapter 11 in Raymond T. Nimmer, The Law of Computer Technology (1997, 2005 Supp.). ----- C. Viral impact: unrestricted vs. copyleft software The idea of 'copyleft' license provisions is a characteristic part of at least a segment of the free software and open source software (FSOS) community.89 Indeed, it is common in FSOS to view restrictive copyleft provisions as the hallmark of truly 'free' software, as the community defines that term. From the perspective of nonbelievers, however, copyleft is the most controversial feature of free software and open source software because it affects the user's rights with respect to the FSOS software and may impact the user's control of software written entirely by it when used in conjunction with the FSOS software. In a stunning example of double-speak, the Preamble to the GPL describes the reason for such provisions in the GPL in terms of protecting the licensee's rights: To protect your rights, ... While proponents refer to such restrictions as creating free software, protecting rights, persons affected or potentially affected by the terms tend to refer to the risk of viral license terms that reach out to infect their own, separately developed software and of improper market leverage and misuse of copyright to control the works of other people. ----- See the light Hyman? regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list gnu-misc-discuss@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
