[plug] [article] Open Code Market (OCM)

[James Devenish]

In message <20031114072419.GE3126 at erdos.home>
on Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 03:24:19PM +0800, Cameron Patrick wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 02:31:09PM +0800, James Devenish wrote:
> Oh.  Re-reading the message it looks like you intermixed stuff that Mike
> wrote with stuff that I wrote - very confusing.  At least to me, anyway.

Oops, yes, I quoted you after the section that was attributed to Mike.

> | > Except that it doesn't limit the rights of authors of GPL'ed works,
> | 
> | Yes it does: it limits copyright rights, like all the free software
> | licenses.
> 
> No it doesn't.
> The authors still have all of the rights that copyright grants them,

Okay, then: the rights are there, but they are not exclusive and authors
cannot exercise full control of them (that is what I meant by "limit the
rights" -- oops). To fix up my response, choose the strongest correct
statement from the following: (a) No, they have lost their right to
exercise full control of all their copyright-granted rights. (b) No,
they have lost flexibility in their ability to control all their
copyright-granted rights.

For example: without the GPL, authors would be able to exclusively
licence their computer programmes, or "software" ;-), or allow their
work to be used in a non-free manner. I am lead to believe that the
GPL does not guarantee authors would have that flexibility (or that
such flexibility would be incompatible with the GPL).

> other people have /more/ than the rights granted by copyright

The above sentence, on its own, is not something that I have intended to
dispute.

> to be able to modify other people's source code.

I think you might have meant "to be able to distribute modified copies
of other people's source code".

> | > If you /do/ want to have these rights, you're welcome to /not/ license
> | > your code under the GPL.
> | 
> | No you're not: the GPL restricts the licensing of your code (if you wish
> | to distribute your derivative or library-dependent works, that is).
> 
> No it doesn't.  The GPL restricts the licensing of any derivative works.

You said "The GPL restricts the licensing of any derivative works". That
is what I meant by "The GPL restricts the licensing of your code".

> You're welcome to license your additions to GPL'ed software under some
> other licence.

Under *particular* other licences that will all the conditions of the
GPL to be imposed.

> Of course, if you distribute it with the code that you modified, you
> must also comply with the GPL, and you won't be able to distribute the
> resulting binaries unless that license is GPL-compatible, though.

Exactly. You could not exercise flexibilities that would be allowed by
the "other" licence if that flexibility is not provided by the GPL,
because your 'addition' will be used as part of a GPL-licensed whole.
Even if you can use your addition outside of a GPL-licensed whole, your
prior distribution under the GPL license may inhibit this (to get around
this, you may have to re-license your work! ow!).

> People license their work under the GPL because they want their work to
> /remain/ open, no matter what some chap called James on the other side
> of the world wants to do to it :-)

Agreed (coming back to my point that the GPL sacrifices freedom for
openness).

> It's probably closer to the way most people use the words, though -
> much like affect/effect,

Yikes!


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