> On Wednesday, 14 August 2013, John Cowan wrote: >> Suppose that Alice sells Bob the source code to Yoyomat, a >> proprietary program with delayed GPL. After the term has passed, Bob >> may now distribute *that very copy* of Yoyomat freely to Charlie >> under the terms of the GPL. In the scenario you outline, he may not; >> he must obtain a new copy from the escrow agent.
The main logistical problem occurs in those cases not where Bob received source code under some "no distribution permitted" license, but when Bob received *only* proprietary binaries of Yoyomat and has no source. In that case, Bob likely has no method (logistically) to get what he knows is Complete, Corresponding Source (CCS) for Yoyomat (except from Alice herself). Distribution of those binary bits under GPL would be copyright infringement because Bob couldn't make such distribution accompanied with CCS (or a valid offer therefor). Bob *might* be able to show, as a defense to a copyright infringement claim, that the source from the third-party escrow was indeed CCS for the old proprietary binary that Alice gave Bob. That'll require some effort to show in practice (especially if much time has gone by) since GPL's CCS is much more than just the source code itself. If Alice is well-intentioned, this issue is unlikely to come up. However, if Alice is a bad actor, this issue would cause serious trouble. Admittedly, this is only an issue for copyleft licenses in this situation. For "later liberation" under permissive licenses, Bob's compliance obligations when distributing the very same proprietary bits are probably easily and obviously met (e.g., properly displaying accurate copyright notices). I reiterate that I am not a fan of these sort of "liberate it later" licensing schemes, but if they are practiced in any event, it'd be good to make sure they function such that later Free Software license compliance is easy for everyone. I suspect that's what John is seeking here as well, and that's a good goal. I hope folks won't be unduly critical of those trying to explore that question. -- -- bkuhn _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss