10-27-2008, 08:46 PM | #1 | |
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GPL2 vs GPL3 licensing issues
(For those confused about where this is coming from, I'm splitting this conversation off from this thread to prevent a major thread drift.)
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Worse, dual licensing also doesn't actually provide you with any of the GPL3 protections, because someone creating a derivative work that wants to bypass them can just claim GPL2 usage. A "This Version Or Later" license is almost always a worst-of-both-worlds situation. All that dual-licensing gets you is that other people can use your code in pure GPL2 and GPL3 projects -- but you can't use their code in return without committing one way or another, though you can merge other GPL2-or-later code without trouble. If you truly believe that you don't want someone to be able to use your software in single-purpose hardware not modifiable by the end-user, then you really need to stay with GPL3, but you also need to think about immediately attaching a Section 7(c) statement to the end of your copyright section, because otherwise you are vulnerable to project name hijacking by the first person to invoke 7(c) on a modified copy of your code. Be warned, however, that invoking 7(c) yourself unfortunately causes headaches for anyone trying to include your software in a wider distrubution. If you ever want MobiPerl packaged with a Linux distrubtion, for instance, GPL3+7(c) will not make your code particularly attractive to packagers, who either have to completely rename your package or commit to never patching it, even in the case of security bugs (see the Iceweasel/Firefox split for a real-world example of this kind of clause being enforced), or ignore the clause and pray you never decide to enforce when they do patch. So your only sane options are really to license GPL2, and put up with the chance of your code being used in E-book reader hardware and be incompatible with GPL3, or license bare GPL3 and be incompatible with GPL2 and anyone who uses GPL3 with a Section 7 that you aren't willing to comply with to use their code (like forcing you to rename your project, print advertisements in your output, or provide legal indemnification), or license GPL3 with your own Section 7c (which at least protects your project name, though all of the other subsections cannot be avoided this way), and make life difficult for distributors. The GPL3 is unfortunately nearly Microsoftian in style -- a few brilliant innovations with Cthulu's tentacles creeping throughout making sane usage difficult. |
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02-11-2009, 06:00 PM | #2 | ||
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Confused
I'm a little confused by your interpretation of GPLv3, in particular:
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02-11-2009, 06:22 PM | #3 |
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I changed to GPL2 or later for MobiPerl. And if that is a problem I can change to a more "Perly" license.
As I understood it you cannot really have a Perl library GPL3 only and put it on CPAN since people using it will not look at the license and it will conflict with all the other libraries. |
02-12-2009, 02:13 AM | #4 | |
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So far so good, but if that person then also invokes the clause preventing derivative works from using the name he released with (i.e. the original name of your project), then you will be in violation if you use any of his changes in your own code unless you use a different name. I.e. at that point you are forced to rename your project to use the improvements to your own code. |
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02-12-2009, 04:22 PM | #5 | ||
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name rename name
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I guess it all goes back to the idea that other people can make changes to the code license later on. Whether they're adding an exception or choosing to move to a later version of the GPL (assuming your code has the "or later" option), you could be faced with changing your license to accept other people's work. You never need to take their contributions though, and even without 7(c) you probably have trademark claims against their use of the name if they have truly forked the project. Just my community-member non-lawyer two cents. |
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02-12-2009, 06:02 PM | #6 | ||
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There are three codebases in question here. Code A is the original code, under bare GPL3. Code B is a derivative work of Code A, under GPL3+requiring modified versions being marked as different, and it may have the same name as Code A. Code C is a derivative work of Code B, and *must* be marked as different from Code B, because the author of Code C does not have any rights to the the code contributed by the author of Code B just because he happens to be the author of Code A, and although the clause can be added in a derivative work, it cannot be removed. With respect to Code C, Code B is the "original material". Not Code A. Not unless all the additions in Code B are rewritten or removed. Quote:
Trademark is a completely separate issue. You don't get trademark rights by default, and few Free Software authors go to the trouble and expense of applying for a software trademark for their work. If you did, and then released a project under GPL3 without applying 7c, you might very well end up losing the trademark entirely on the grounds that you didn't defend it. |
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02-13-2009, 04:40 PM | #7 | |||
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Likely?
I guess I'm not worried because I don't see those sorts of disputes happening. The more common situation I see is projects that start with too little license flexibility, having chosen something like the artistic license, and then end up going through difficult relicensing processes to track down inactive committers etc when the community decides that they want to pull in code under GPL or some other license. So the fact that the "or later" option exists, or that the section 7 provisions allow me to pull in code from Apache 2.0, make me feel like I'll have less trouble down the road if other people join the project.
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Now, even if I take your patches and reincorporate them into the main MySQL, I don't think you'll be able to use section 7 to make me change the project name. If you look at the text in section 7, before it lists the types of things you can write exceptions about, it says: Quote:
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It is a non-lawyer, pragmatist's argument, I know. But that's an accurate description of me. |
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