Alexandre Oliva wrote:
Yes, so if you want to distribute a copy under the GPL, you must agree
to its terms, which then cover the entire work.
But that does not take away any other rights you might have as to
specific parts.
Rights aren't the issue.
Of course they are. A license is a grant of rights, nothing else.
Licenses often impose terms you must meet as a condition of granting
those rights. In the GPL case, the only way you can meet those
conditions is to apply the GPL terms on all parts of the work on all
subsequent distributions.
I don't see how you can agree to the GPL terms for a copy first, then
distribute a copy of some dual or other licensed part of it in a way
you just agreed not to do.
I honestly don't see any "agreement not to do". I see permissions.
Permissions you get when you agree to the license terms. Otherwise the
restrictions of copyright apply.
The closest to that, in GPLv2, are sections 4 and 5. The statement
"These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this
License", in the case of dual licensing, or of a component under a
more permissive license, is simply not true in these cases.
If you don't accept the GPL terms you would have any permissions granted
by sub-components. If you do accept the GPL, it demands its own terms
be applied to all components.
Except that you agreed not to in that 2b clause.
Err, no. 2b is just a condition to one of the permissions. You're
not even bound by 2b; you could instead use the permissions encoded in
1, 2a, 2c, 3, or any other permissions you have that are not subject
to this condition you object to. 2b is not a prohibition, just a
specification of one of the possible variants of the permission
granted in 2.
2b says that if you accept the license - and you are not free to
redistribute the gpl-only parts if you don't - that the terms must apply
to all components.
but I don't see how the agreement to apply the GPL restrictions
You're still getting confused because you're thinking in terms of
restrictions.
No, I'm not confused. You can't accept the GPL on a sub-set of a work.
You can ignore the GPL and use other terms available for a subset, but
if you agree to the GPL, you've agreed to apply it to the whole.
There aren't any. Think "permission to go that far",
in the absence of which you couldn't go anywhere.
Permissions aren't the point - it is what you agree to do.
The restriction on
not going any farther is not something you get from the GPL, so by
agreeing with it you don't agree with any such restrictions. The
restrictions are encoded in copyright law. If you accept the
permissions granted through the license, they won't take away any
other permissions that lifted restrictions from law.
The terms of a license have nothing to do with copyright law. You can
agree to anything in a license as long as it isn't actually illegal. An
exclusion of copyright rules is simply what you get in return.
The point of that work-as-a-whole clause is to get you to agree to
apply restrictions to other people's work
Rather to grant the same permissions over any work derived from the
work provided under the GPL, to ensure that the whole remains free.
You don't have to believe me, that's spelled out in the preamble of
the license.
It doesn't matter if you believe the misleading preamble or not. It is
the fine print of 2b that demands that all combined parts of the
work-as-a-whole have the GPL terms applied, or you don't have the
freedom to redistribute any that don't have separate licenses.
When not combined into that single work, if they're not derived works
of GPLed works on their own, their copyright holders can apply
whatever terms they like to it. The GPL can't and doesn't change
that.
But then you can't distribute the strictly-GPL part of that work because
you didn't agree to the terms of the license.
The condition for distribution of modified works only extends only to
works derived from the GPLed work.
The condition makes it impossible to combine third party code that can't
be covered by the GPL.
If the combined work is derived
from a GPLed work, then its authors have granted you permission to
distribute the combined work under the GPL. You also need permission
from copyright holders of any other works you have used. If all of
them permit distribution under the GPL (say, because they granted you
a license that is more permissive than the GPL), then you have
permission to distribute the whole under the GPL.
Yes, if it is all-GPL, then no new problem happens with additional GPL
distribution of the whole work.
If you have permission from all copyright holders to distribute the
combined work under another license, you can do that too. Even if the
licenses are incompatible, you can extend the permissions granted by
the copyright holders to all recipients of the program. You don't
have to choose one and use it. Even if you modify the program, as
long as you work within the permissions of both licenses, you can
extend those permissions to anyone else.
Yes, if the whole work is dual-licensed it can be distributed under the
other license terms without agreeing to the GPL terms.
It's a bit like Schrödinger's cat. Until you open the box and check
(i.e., do something that one of the licenses don't permit), the cat is
both dead and alive ( i.e., you are operating under both licenses at
the same time).
At this point you've agreed to apply GPL terms to the whole work. If
you are going to break that agreement you need to hide back in the box
so no one knows if it was before or after you accepted the GPL license
on that work.
It's only when you operate out of the scope of a license than you are
then no longer permitted to modify or distribute the result of that
modification under that license. You can still distribute the work
under the other.
That's the reason the GPL is different from other licenses.
All copyleft licenses are like that, at least to some extent. Some of
them don't piggiback on the copyright notion of "derived work",
though, and instead choose different lines to draw, such as "library
interfaces" and "source files".
Even though they can't exactly force you to apply their terms to other
people's work, it is as close as you can get. They withhold your
freedom to redistribute until you have agreed to their terms - and in
the GPL case these must apply to all other combined work.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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