> Thanks for the various remarks, this licensing > stuff isn't my field. From what you've said, > looks like my concerns are unfounded.
Seems like. > The truth of who owns what is messy enough to > explain why there isn't a simple "this is all > GPLed by X. The End" statement at the start. Even that is not simple. Trust me on this. > > What do you mean by "granting a license". > > (without wishing to extend a topic ad nauseum ...) > > In my simple world, a license is between a licensor > and a licensee. It's a contract where the licensee > gains rights, and the licensor gains money or some > other form of recompense, such as a sales channel. > "Licensing" is different to "gifting". Gifting is where > you give something in return for nothing. Mozilla.org transfering code to you for nothing in return is a gift, and might be considered to be a gift for legal purposes. However, people granting you rights to use the code in certain ways is not a gift. It's just someone excersizing the powers that copyright law gives unto them. In the instance of allowing other people to distribute code you own by placing it under the MPL, there's nothing taken from the owner, and nothing given to the recipient - instead, the rules of what owner and recipient can do merely change (in a mutually benificial way, one might argue). If there was any transfer of copyright, then that might be a gift, but most people in this project do not transfer their copyright, they merely allow people to use the code despite copyright laws. > But then I'm no lawyer and might have this totally wrong. Nor am I, of course, and I might have it totally wrong, but I've read everything on the subject of open-source/free software licencing, so unless it's all wrong... > Initially it seemed to me that the Mozilla arrangements > were more like a gift from AOL (since no-one signed > anything). That prompted my question "who transferred > the IP?". Tranferring IP is a common step for > gifting - for example when copyright on a popular book > is gifted to a charity or a foundation by an author. No-one transfers copyrights or patent rights, but they do allow the recipients of MPL'd files to use material copyrighted or patented by the author despite the copyright or patent legislation. > Since we all happily use other GPLed stuff without > signing anything, its a bit unimportant what's a license > and what's a gift, anyway. No, I think you should make that distinction. If it's a gift, then you get something - something, whether tangible or intangible, changes hands - the giver no longer has it, and the recipient now does. If it's a licence, then the rules concerning what you can do with copyrighted material change. To demonstrate - imagine that I get the Mach microkernel from the makers by giving them $500 and asking them to send me the source code. The source code is not a gift - I don't get it gratis - but it is licenced in a way that makes it free software because I'm allowed to do anything whatever with the code. Or, I can go to opensource.apple.com and get the Mach kernel from them at no cost. In that case, the actual Mach kernel is a gift from Apple, but they licence it in a way such that I am restricted (to a worryingly great extent) in what I can do with it. > I've no desire to split hairs over who did or didn't > agree to what. I just had a moment of concern when > the source I got wasn't as simply licensed as I hoped > for. We can hope that this will be resolved someday. -Emlyn
