On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 22:40 +0200, Lars Luthman wrote: > A copyright licence is a licence, not a contract. It can only grant > additional rights to the ones you are already given under your > copyright > law, not remove any of them. In virtually every country the copyright > holder can do whatever he or she wants with his or her own work, and > releasing it under a licence that grants additional rights to others > can > never change that. In most countries (certainly the UK) a non-copyright holder starts from a position of zero rights. The only way I can access a copyright item is by a licence from the copyright holder that grants me rights. In the case of LS/libgig I am being granted two sets of (possibly) incompatible rights by two different licences from the same copyright holder. I am being licenced use of LS under the terms of the GPL V2 + a restriction on redistribution as a commercial product. I am also being licenced the use of libgig under a pure GPL V2 licence. The problem is that the pure GPL V2 libgig "virally infects" LS and the result is a (possible) breach of the terms of the GPL V2, and the GPL V2 states that if you breach the licence all rights granted under it are withdrawn. So at this point I have no licence to use libgig and I am in breach of copyright. The only way out is that the copyright holders of LS and libgig are one and the same and it is unlikely that they would seek legal redress against me for violating their copyright in this manner, nor are they likely to sue themselves :-) I still maintain that the situation does need cleared up once and for all, preferably in a manner in which LS can be classed as Free Software suitable for inclusion in distributions such as Fedora and Debian. Having thought about it some more the simplest solution would be to re-licence libgig under the LGPL with no extra restrictions. This wouldn't solve the problem of getting it into distributions, but it would allow places like Planet CCRMA to continue to make packages available. > > I am not even an amateur lawyer so this is getting way beyond me! It > > would be nice to have it settled once and for all either LS is > > re-licenced under a standard GPL compatible FOSS licence, or someone > > asks the FSF for an opinion. The latter might be the nuclear option - > > the FSF opinion might cause the LS developers to stop distributing the > > software and walk away :-( > They could not do that. The only thing they could do would be to tell > the LS hackers to stop calling their licence GPL if it isn't GPL, and > remove all references to GNU and the FSF from it. By "cause" I did not mean force or require. I meant that there is a risk that all this talk about licences and LS means that the LS developers get fed up and stop developing or change to a much more restrictive licence under their on volition. No more LS development would be the worst possible outcome - it is an excellent piece of software. > Also, the FSF may have written the GPL, but that does not mean that > their opinion about what it means matters more than anyone else's - > especially when it's used for software that is not a part of the GNU > project. All I meant was the FSF is the body with the most experience of the GPL and enforcing it so their opinion would count for a lot more than mine, or most others outside a court. They also have proper lawyers and legal advice, unlike most of us on this list. Anyway, I once promised myself that I would never get involved in one of these licence debates and now I have :-( I'm off to do something more interesting instead - perhaps I'll make music with these excellent tools :-) Keith. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user
