Gordon Messmer wrote:
In accepting it's terms you give up your freedom to distribute any
part of the work under different terms, including any of your own that
you might want to add.
Since you never had any such freedom under copyright law, you aren't
giving anything up.
That makes no sense. You do have the freedom and right to license your
own work under any terms you want. You do have the freedom and right to
redistribute other works under other licenses, free or with other
arrangements. But you must give up your freedom and rights or you are
unable to participate in distributing these things as part of a work
that contains any GPL-covered material.
You don't have just have 'permission' to redistribute under GPL terms,
you have a mandate not to distribute any part of the whole under any
other terms. It's not unilateral - you must give up your freedom.
I don't believe that to actually be the case. You've repeatedly
insisted that the GPL replaces other license's terms, but I believe that
you are mistaken.
In the case of a fully dual-licensed work, you would be able to use the
terms of the other license and ignore the GPL. In the case of a
combination, where any part of the work is strictly-GPL you will be
required to accept the GPL terms to do anything copyright would
prohibit. And I see no possible way to accept the terms of the GPL on
anything less than the work-as-a-whole as specificied in section 2b.
If you take Project X, distributed under the GPL, and implement feature
A under a BSD license, when you distribute your improved version, the
GPL protects the users by guaranteeing them all of the rights covered by
the GPL. That is, you may not impose additional restrictions on their
use or redistribution of your improved version of Project X.
But the point is that you also cannot impose fewer restrictions, or
different restrictions, or no restrictions on the component you add or
include from an existing less restricted project. This component can
exist on its own with other terms, but becomes encumbered by the GPL in
situations where you are required to accept that license on any part of
the work.
This is
what Alexandre is referring to as "power"; if you placed additional
restrictions on your users, you would be exerting a kind of power
granted by copyright law and restricting their freedom.
It is not freedom, it is a restriction itself.
However, the GPL does not replace the terms of your license on your
code. If you grant users redistribution rights to the source code for
feature A under a BSD license, then those users may use *that source
code* in any way that's allowed by your license. They can't use the
entire work under your more permissive license, but they can use the
source code that *you* wrote, as governed by *your* license.
Please point out any exception you can find to section 2b. Or how you
can 'unaccept' the terms the GPL specifies once you have accepted them.
Do you see, now, how the "work as a whole" clause does not replace the
terms of your license?
No, I don't see that. I see no way to accept any GPL terms other that
the way it specifies - covering the work as a whole. If you could, you
could as easily include proprietary components with different licenses
and ignore the terms on that part.
The terms of your license will always apply to
your code, and no other license can change that under copyright law. The
GPL's terms must only be met when distributing the combined work.
Accepting the GPL terms is what you must do to be permitted to
distribute or anything prohibited by copyright. But then there is no
provision for unaccepting it while you do something it wouldn't permit
to some part of the work. At that point you've agreed that you wouldn't.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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