Re: OSL 2.0 and linking of libraries
My take on this definition is that most statically linked programs include a relocation table and symbol tables which are annotations of the source code. These annotations are not particularly original, but if you declare that your statically linked program is not an original work of authorship, then it is not protected under copyright law. That only means it is not separately protected under copyright. The owner of the source code copyright retains control over all copying of the work, including copies that involve mechanical transformation and later copying of that transformation. Otherwise, copyright would not be maintained when a modern digital copier is used to copy an art print, which is clearly not the case. Likewise, printing a document using PostScript does not create a separately copyrighted document even though the raw script looks nothing like the WYSIWYG editor window. I agree with Larry Rosen's view, but confusion in regards to this issue is so rampant that failure to state it explicitly in the license leads to an endless stream of FAQs. Roy -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: OSL 2.0 and linking of libraries
That only means it is not separately protected under copyright. The owner of the source code copyright retains control over all copying of the work, including copies that involve mechanical transformation and later copying of that transformation. You forgot 17 USC 117. See comments below... It would take a pretty extreme court to say that making necessary copies for personal use has any applicability to copying for redistribution to others, which is the only sort of copying controlled by open source licenses. Roy -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: apache license 2.0 for consideration
on that work). I believe that is the same spirit in which the GPL says that one cannot distribute as GPL a Program or Derived Work that is covered by a patent with terms more restrictive than the GPL. I hope that helps, Roy T. Fielding, co-founder, The Apache Software Foundation ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://roy.gbiv.com/ -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: apache license 2.0 for consideration
I would point out that ASL2's clause 3 does not mention derivative works at all: it provides a patent license only for the Work, not for anyu Derivative Works licensed (under the terms of clause 4) under a different license. On a side note, since software patent law is applied to the method of something and not to the particular expression, a patent license for doing that something remains in force regardless of the software that is later used to do it. The license is from the owner of the method to the legal entity using that method. In other words, it is a blanket permission -- once you have the permission, you can use whatever tool you like (even one not derived from the ASL2 work) up until the permission is revoked. If a company sues for infringement on the basis of a patent being included in XY, where XY consists of X (non-infringing) and Y (infringing), then that will be brought up by the defense and the company will have to claim Y infringes as well (or drop the case entirely). As such, there is no need for the patent license to talk about derivative works. Nor would it be safe to do so, since derivative work is a concept of copyright law, not patent law. IANAL, so I'm not sure if that is codified somewhere or simply the collective experience of those I've talked to. Roy -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: apache license 2.0 for consideration
Are you saying that your license allows GPL-forking? No, I am saying that the Apache License says: You may add Your own copyright statement to Your modifications and may provide additional or different license terms and conditions for use, reproduction, or distribution of Your modifications, or for any such Derivative Works as a whole, provided Your use, reproduction, and distribution of the Work otherwise complies with the conditions stated in this License. Note that our license applies to the Work, not the copyright on the derivative work, and thus any GPL code combined with Apache License code will remain under the GPL. Roy -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: apache license 2.0 for consideration
Why, then, is the MIT license compatible with the GPL? Because the MIT license is silent about patents; in and of itself, it can't do anything to require you to breach the GPL's licensing terms. (It may be that the word use provides an implied patent license.) A specific MIT-licensed program may be GPL-incompatible, but MIT-licensed programs as a class are not, because they don't impose any requirements incompatible with the GPL's. Neither does the Apache License. Please read the terms carefully: 3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. Under no circumstance does this add a restriction that does not already exist within the GPL. The GPL prohibits distribution of a work that is covered by non-free patents. The Apache License says that any patent licenses granted to you by virtue of it being contributed to Apache go away if you claim there exists a non-free patent in the work. Section 4: You may add Your own copyright statement to Your modifications and may provide additional or different license terms and conditions for use, reproduction, or distribution of Your modifications, or for any such Derivative Works as a whole, provided Your use, reproduction, and distribution of the Work otherwise complies with the conditions stated in this License. In other words, any GPL code that is combined with Apache License code remains under the GPL, which is the sole requirement for compatibility. I have not seen Eben's analysis of the approved version of the Apache License, so I have no idea why the FSF site claims they are incompatible. It is simply claimed on the site that it adds an additional restriction, as if nobody bothered to read the terms. Cheers, Roy T. Fieldinghttp://roy.gbiv.com/ Chief Scientist, Day Software http://www.day.com/ -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: apache license 2.0 for consideration
Because the MIT license is a blanket grant of permission, almost without restriction: That is completely irrelevant. Unlike copyright, a patent does not move along with the work. The patent may be owned by a completely separate company of which the author is totally unaware at the time of distribution. Aside from that, there are no implied licenses to third parties. Just because a person has received software from one company, indicating that the company wished that person to use the software (an implied grant), does not imply that the person can give the same software to a third person and the implied license along with it. The GPL has a stronger restriction here in order to prevent the first person from receiving the software as GPL in the first place; no such restriction is true of any other license. If you argue that such a restriction is necessary for compatibility with the GPL, then no license is compatible with the GPL (including itself, because the patent may be approved after the initial GPL distributions). The point I am making is that the Apache License does not have any additional restrictions over the GPL. A derivative work that is distributed under only the GPL license does satisfy every single condition or restriction in the Apache License. If a patent does show up and a lawsuit ensues, then for those people the Apache License becomes no more permissive than the GPL. Roy -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: apache license 2.0 for consideration
I think you're using the term non-free to mean two different things in two different sentences. Nope. Let me reword: :-) | The GPL prohibits distribution of a work that is | covered by patents not distributable under GPL terms. The Apache | License says that any patent | licenses granted to you by virtue of it being contributed to Apache | go away if you claim there exists a patent in the work that's not | distributable under Apache license terms. If patents not distributable under GPL terms == patents not distributable under Apache license terms, then I would agree that the Apache license doesn't add a restriction not already in the GPL. Try software not distributable under GPL terms. Talking about distributing the patent doesn't make any sense, which is why you are getting confused over the permissions. However, I claim that if there exist Apache-licensed patents that are not also GPL-licensed, then the Apache license is not universally GPL-compatible. No, that is reversed logic. If there exist GPL-licensed software that would somehow be restricted by the Apache License restrictions, then they would not be compatible. I don't think it is reasonable to invent new definitions of compatibility. I also claim that since the Apache license can retract Apache-patent-licenses for people making patent infringement claims, that that retraction would have to apply to people using Apache-GPL'd code. Then, since the retraction applies to someone using GPL'd code, it breaks GPL licensing for everyone using that GPL'd code. As it would if the code was entirely GPL'd. The GPL says that you cannot redistribute software that is covered by a patent wherein the patent is not licensed free for everyone. The Apache License says that if you claim the Apache software contains something that is not licensed free for everyone (i.e., specifically, you accuse someone of infringing your patent which implies that your patent is not free for everyone), then you can't use the Apache License as a defense against your own infringements. In contrast, the GPL says you cannot redistribute the software at all. Therefore, the Apache License is less restrictive than the GPL. Furthermore, since the Apache License's patent grant does not apply to the GPL'd code in any way (only the Work which is licensed under the Apache License) and has no impact on distribution whatsoever, whether or not such licenses disappear has no influence on the code covered by the GPL. In other words, any GPL code that is combined with Apache License code remains under the GPL, which is the sole requirement for compatibility. If someone can pull back a patent license via the Apache license through an Apache-GPL'd work, then..it looks to me like Apache requirements are still holding, and that the work is not just limited by GPL requirements. GPL is a copyright license. It cannot prevent the possibility of a patent, and does not try to. It merely states that, if a patent is being enforced, then the code cannot be distributed as GPL. That is true regardless of what license covers the original code that was later combined with the GPL work. The Apache License does not state, or even imply, that a non-GPL-compliant patent exists on the code. Nor does a GPL Derived Work have to be free of any patents (such is impossible if you look at what has been patented in the US); it merely has to be free of patents that restrict distribution to anything other than GPL terms. If such a patent exists, the GPL's own restrictions override any patent license granted by the Apache License -- whether or not you are the one suing someone is not relevant to the GPL. Roy -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: apache license 2.0 for consideration
On Wednesday, February 18, 2004, at 03:22 PM, Mark Shewmaker wrote: On Tue, 2004-02-17 at 20:20, Roy T. Fielding wrote: No, the patent (if there was one) would be an additional restriction on the GPL. The Apache License itself is not the patent and does not restrict the GPL any more than the GPL would have been restricted by the patent absent the Apache License. Let me make a more limited, but far more convoluted, claim: Code incorporating patents (when the code and contributors' patents are licensed solely under the Apache License Version 2.0) cannot be (safely?) incorporated into a derivative work distributed under GPLv2, because any recipient who receives a copy of such a derivative work is required to refrain from alleging infringement of any of his own patents incorporated into the original Apache-License-only code. (That requirement is more strict than the GPL's requirement to license the patent for GPL use.) Allow me to make a less convoluted translation: Code incorporating patents, when the code and contributors' patents are licensed solely under the MIT license, cannot be incorporated into a derivative work distributed under GPLv2, because any recipient who receives a copy of such a derivative work has no rights to use any of the patents incorporated into the original MIT code. Why, then, is the MIT license compatible with the GPL? Roy -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
Re: apache license 2.0 for consideration
On Tuesday, February 17, 2004, at 04:04 PM, Mark Shewmaker wrote: On Sun, 2004-02-08 at 14:19, Rodent of Unusual Size wrote: it is our belief that this new licence is just as osi-compliant as the 1.1 version, and is more clearly compatible with the gpl to boot. Is the patent grant section GPL compatible? Yes. From the Apache License, Version 2.0: | If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a | cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a | Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or | contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to | You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date | such litigation is filed. From the GPLv2: | For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free | redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly | or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it | and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the | Program. To me it looks like the patent grant is an additional restriction beyond the bare GPL when a program licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0 is then distributed under the GPL. No, the patent (if there was one) would be an additional restriction on the GPL. The Apache License itself is not the patent and does not restrict the GPL any more than the GPL would have been restricted by the patent absent the Apache License. Roy -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
