Re: Clear up my License information

Patrik Stridvall wrote:

> > I think it's *still* unclear.  Easy to show this in java: Let's
> > say you have a LGPLed jar file in package "gnu.foo.bar".  I believe
> > from what rms has said in the past, if you write "package gnu.foo.bar;" in
> > your code, I think a LGPL claim can be made on what you
> > write, especially if you call something in gnu.foo.bar.

> LGPL primary claims what the LGPL:ed code calls so I guess you mean the GPL.

LGPL also makes association claims ("work as a whole") - I said what I meant.
 
> In any case. Regardless of what licence the patch as a whole is (or must be
> under) doesn't mean that it isn't possible to extract X11 license code from
> that patch.

Hard to say.  If you take rms' view of how viral the GPL derived clause is, then
I'd say it is possible that you couldn't.  Remember that any claim is not going
to be made by the person who made the (X11) patch, but by some other 3rd party -
and could claim *all* the patch is derivative code.

> Not even the GPL claim that code must be ONLY under the GPL.
> It must be under at least one GPL compatible license but it says nothing
> about other licenses.

This is incorrect.  Patches on GPLed work MUST be GPLed (not GPL compatible).
You may relicense it as something else also, but at least one MUST be GPL.

> In short:
> The GPL claim doesn't (and can't) increase the restrictions of the code
> published by other authors regardless of whether they use GPL:ed code or
> not. The restrictions or lack of the restrictions will alway remain.

Probably, but think of this case:  Let's use wine as an example.  Let's say I
took the LGPL wine when it was first converted to LGPL (so wine == rewind) and
I publically stated that I took LGPLwine.tar.gz and made a propriatary change
to it.  Could I get sued (assume that both trees are identical for the sake of
argument)?
 
> > one could come up with an if (let's say if( setup_fn() &&
> > setup_fn1() ) ).
> > It can be a gray area.
> 
> No, it can't since the patch wouldn't apply, so manual "surgery" is needed.

Patch doesn't do changes?  

> Regardles on what the merger actually did it would be almost impossible to
> prove that an actual infringement have taken place unless the substantial parts
> was almost exactly the same save whitespace or variable substitutions.

This has yet to be seen.  I think this is where the "contamination" would
fit in, and I believe there are legal precidents that argue against you here
(the IBM bios case comes to mind).

> The main problem is that some things that the LGPL and the GPL tries to
> do is either not well defined (mostly LGPL) or obviously incompatible
> with copyright law (mostly GPL).

amen. :)
 
> Copyright law wasn't designed with copyleft licenses in mind so some
> thing that isn't very relevant there normal copyright is concerned
> is largely undefined.
> 
> Specifically patches (read: modifications) isn't a normally a problem
> with normal copyrighted work since in order to for an end user to
> benefit from the modifications he must legally buy of copy of the
> orginal work and thus the orginal author will always be compensated.
> 
> With copylefted works, which the end user usually can get for free,
> this breaks down...
> 
> This is a much larger problem that I think most people realize,
> since I can see no sane solution to this problem other than the
> obvious one. "If you did't ask for compensation for each copy,
> tough luck, you had your chance, don't come crying because
> you made a bad choice. After all it was your voluntary choice".

That's if the legal system is being nice.  
 
> Of course, if so, it would mean that all copyleft licenses were
> essentially equal to the X11 license...

Another possible outcome might be that if you require any compensation,
you lose any indemnifcation (and this is not too far fetched).  If this
happens, it would be *infinitely* worse than X11, and you are forbidden
to change the license to boot (unless you add that "later" clause AND
FSF gives up copyleft - two big Ifs).  Never underestimate the legal
system.

-r