On Thu, 2005-12-08 at 12:00 +0100, Peder Hedlund wrote: > > On Thu, 8 Dec 2005, Pete Leigh wrote: > > > But if he's accepted the LS license being talked about, it's not the > > GPL, it's the GPL plus an exception disallowing commercial use. > > A different beast. > > What I was caught up with was ?6 of the GPL where it says > "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise > of the rights granted herein." > But apparently this only affects the right to "copy, distribute or > modify" the software, not acctually running it. These terms are for the licensee (you), not the copyright owner (the LS authors). The copyright owners are allowed to relicense their software any way they want. If you have a GPL'd copy of LS then it is GPL and no one can tell you that the terms for your copy have suddenly changed. But if you download the CVS version, which apparently has this "no commercial use" restriction, then you are not allowed to use that version commercially. > OTOH this raises the interesting question: what's to stop me from > taking the GPL source, modifying it a bit and releasing it as > LinuxSamplerXP with no extra restrictions? The source is GPL and > according to ?6 I have GPL, and only GPL, rights to modify the source > and create a derivative work. I then release it as "pure" GLP. You are not a copyright owner, so you can not release the software under another license. And since the actual license is GPL + the non-commercial "exception", that extract from ?6 could be taken to mean that you are not allowed to impose any restrictions other than the one in the GPL + the exception. _Or_ it could be taken to mean that you are not allowed to impose any further restrictions other than the ones in the pure GPL, in which case you are not allowed to redistribute LS at all since redistributing it under the pure GPL would give other people additional rights (using it commercially), which you can not give them since you are not the copyright owner. From ?7: "If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all." This is why I said it was confusing... -- Lars Luthman PGP key: http://www.d.kth.se/~d00-llu/pgp_key.php Fingerprint: FCA7 C790 19B9 322D EB7A E1B3 4371 4650 04C7 7E2E -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-user/attachments/20051208/2d632e3f/attachment.bin
