Re: what DOES the GPL really say?

[David Kastrup <dak@mailhost.neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de>]

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David Masterson <david@batcave.bungi.com> writes:

> 4. By using GPL'ed software, you have signed a license that should be
>    every bit as binding as the Microsoft (et.al.) copyright licenses
>    that you accept by opening their package -- license definition.

Wrong.  You have *not* signed such a licence "by using GPLed"
software, and consequently cannot be held to it, or sued for breach of
contract.  There is no such thing as "silent agreement" when using
software or opening a package.  What you can be sued for if you
disregard the "licence" is breach of copyright, as the copyright
holder has agreed to relax his rights for the sake of your using his
software only under certain constraints.

This is an important difference:
a) The penalties and procedures for breach of contract and breach of
copyright are somewhat different.
b) The only person allowed to sue for breach of copyright with
relation to some GPLed software is the copyright holder of some piece
of it.  Other than that, it is not enforceable.

> 5. If the GPL is a lawyers construct to represent the "Golden Rule"
>    and, yet, has flaws in it that allow subversion of the Rule, then
>    maybe it should be modified -- as done in GPL v2.

You are confusing things here.  The GPL is a user licence.  It neither
gives or takes any rights to his own software to the author, nor can
it in fact legally restrict the author's right to do what he wants
to do with his own software.  He can quite legally stop distributing
the source of it, although not the redistribution of existing GPLed
copies because he has already granted a usage licence including
copying.

The GPL is *not* some declaration of compellation of niceness by the
author.  Nor is it useful for the spread of free software to demand
from prospective authors to go in chain and fetters.  It gives some
guarantees of legal safety for the user, but none of of overall
availability (only of source availability if you got just binaries
from a redistributor).

In fact, some original software might be GPLed without making any
source available by the author, only binaries.  The most you could do
in that case is sue for misleading claims (unfair competition or
something like that).  Of course, he cannot do so if his work is a
derivative of some software for which he does not hold the copyright.

The GPL is a licence for the user, not the author.  It only enforces
something related to a vision of the "Golden Rule" on the user and
possible redistributor of the software, not the author.  It could not
do so even if it wanted to:  the author keeps the copyright to his
software and can do with it what he wants.

The alternative would be to require the author to waive his copyright
and assign it to some third party, such as the FSF, before he was
allowed to use the GPL for it.  The FSF is presumably neither willing
nor able to manage the copyright business of all authors of free
software all over the world.

Don't go whining about how the GPL does not strike you as useful
before you understand the implications of it and alternatives.

-- 
David Kastrup                                     Phone: +49-234-700-5570
Email: dak@neuroinformatik.ruhr-uni-bochum.de       Fax: +49-234-709-4209
Institut f�r Neuroinformatik, Universit�tsstr. 150, 44780 Bochum, Germany