Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffC
From A to O - a lot of "thou must" - but who can stop the determined?
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Well, I see many of people here do not understand how exactly GPL works.
Program distributed under GNU Public Licence is copyrighted. The author keeps the Copyright and gives you permission to copy, modify and distribute the program - either in the original form or your modification.
If I want to distribute program that someone else wrote I need authors permission. GPL gives me that permission. If I disregard the GPL (and refuse to adhere to the "thou must" clauses, for example by refusing to publish my modified sources), I do not have the license to distribute the program and the author can sue me for copyright infringement.
This has happened before.
A Big Router Company -- the BRC -- starts selling routers that contain Peter's Special Routing Program. The BRC does not distribute sources to people it sold routers to. Bam! Peter can sue the manufacturer for copyright infringement. Peter can force the manufacturer to 1.) stop selling that product 2.) publish sources 3.) negotiate special license from him (for example by sponsoring further development).
This has happened. And do not think that Peter (our imaginary author) won't sue the Big Router Company, because he is just a student and has no money for lawyer. He can ask Free Software Foundation for help and he WILL receive it.
So. You want to publish your novel under GPL. What will you demand? That I distribute your novel with the source codes? That when I write fanfiction based on your novel I also publish it under GPL?
Have a look at the BSD license.
It says basically that the Work is copyrighted and anybody can do anything with the Work as long as he acknowledges that you are the author of the original Work and that he won't keep you responsible for any damages ... (whatever) that is caused by use of your Work..
The damages clause might be interesting in case of software. for example if source code of my program was copied and modified to operate Blowout Preventer Control Unit, nobody can hold me responsible for failure.
There are lots of interesting licenses. Mozilla license, Apache license, and Creative Commons.
Yes, it is true that you can not prevent anybody from copying the work, so why bother with permission?
Well, imagine that I find your book on the net and I want to post a link to it on Mobileread.com server. Unless there is clear license that allows me to do that, moderators will delete my link and warn me that I am committing Copyright infringement.