And on the subject of the MIT- annd BSD-style licenses, removing the license notice which contains the copyright holder(s)' name(s) and replacing it with an SPDX license identifier is a material change.
On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 8:46 AM, Fendt, Oliver <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Jilayne, hi all, > > thank you very much for the comment. This is exactly what I was told from > a very well-known Lawyer here in Germany. > > Only some final words about the statements from Eric: > " Your beliefs about IP law are excessively rigid; this is a common form > of superstition among hackers. In reality, the move from a GPL header to > an SPDX tag is legally innocuous because it has what a court would call "no > inequitable consequences" - that is, nobody's interests are measurably > damaged by it." > ... > "I am not a lawyer, but I am a subject-matter expert who has consulted > with lawyers. I will now express an opinion: It is *highly unlikely* that > a court will ever find any change of open-source license actionable, with > one possible exception: changes between reciprocal (GPL-style) and > non-reciprocal licenses. But from a court's point of view the difference > between (say) BSD and Apache would be very much de minimis non curat lex." > > > Personally I do not believe that my beliefs in this case are to rigid, > because this was already discussed with a lawyer, who is an expert in > copyright law before I posted it on the mailing list. Furthermore Jilayne > is of the same opinion. > And secondly, in Germany there are actions from a copyright holder > enforcing his copyright with, lets say, very uncommon arguments. Due to > this I disagree to " that is, nobody's interests are measurably damaged by > it" and "It is *highly unlikely* that a court will ever find any change of > open-source license actionable". > > > Ciao > Oliver > > > > > On Nov 23, 2015, at 8:50 AM, Fendt, Oliver <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > Thanks for sharing this. > > I'am wondering who should use the tool? > > In my opinion it can only be used by the copyright holders of the single > files where the standard license header shall be replaced and not by any > other person. > > It might be picky and you might say, hey that is something equivalent, > but the GPL-2.0 for example says in chapter 1: > > ..."keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the > > absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a > copy of this License along with the Program."... > > > > If you as a "non copyright holder" of a OSS package replace the standard > GPL-2.0 header by (let's say) "this is licensed under GPL-2.0" In my > opinion you have violated the GPL, because of the chapter 1. > > > > You can argue "that there is no violation because it is just another > notice for the same thing", _but_ at least you have removed the phrase: > > " This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, > > but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of > > MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the > > GNU General Public License for more details." > > > > Which is an element for the standard GPL-2.0 header, and this is for > sure a GPL violation because of "keep intact all the notices ... to the > absence of any warranty". I do not want to violate the GPL, you? > > > If you are not the copyright holder and do not have the copyright holder's > permission, then I would not recommend removing a notice, especially in > this case (i.e., GPL, has specific notice, has requirement to retain > notices, etc.) - both from a legal perspective and as good practice. If you > are the copyright holder or have the copyright holder's permission, then > you may choose to do otherwise. > > Jilayne (I am a lawyer, I'm not your lawyer, your lawyer may say > something different) > > _______________________________________________ > Spdx-tech mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.spdx.org/mailman/listinfo/spdx-tech >
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