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Careful, though. The GPL has a no-added-restrictions clause which says that if you receive the work covered under the GPL and additional text that has additiona

by jordigh 10y ago

Careful, though. The GPL has a no-added-restrictions clause which says that if you receive the work covered under the GPL and additional text that has additional restrictions, you may disregard the additional text. It's like a failsafe against homebrew license writers who might want to distribute the work under the GPL plus some other shenanigans. Removing restrictions is always ok, though. That's like the linking exception GNU Classpath: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception

dragonwriter 10y ago
> The GPL has a no-added-restrictions clause Correct. > says that if you receive the work covered under the GPL and additional text that has additional restrictions, you may disregard the additional text. No, it doesn't (EDIT: as below, the GPLv3 actually does, I had forgotten this element of its changes from the GPLv2 in the additional terms area; there's good downthread discussion of this and its effects, I'm not going to revise the rest of this piece to address it.) It says that it is illegal to add additional restrictions to GPL covered work. It does not say that if you receive a work with the GPL and other restrictive text you may ignore the other restrictive text, nor is that its effect (its effect that if the author was legally obligated to release a work under the GPL because it was derivative of an upstream GPL-licensed work, then the author releasing it with additional restrictive text is in violation of the GPL and can be subject to whatever the legal system decides to assign as a sanction for that violation. Absent a decision by the legal system to do so, or compelling the author to do so, that doesn't give anyone else downstream permission to use that author's work other than under the conditions -- the GPL with the additional restrictions -- which they released it with.) And there are certainly situations where the legal system would not compel the distributor of the work distributed with the GPL + additional restrictions to allow it to be used GPL only (such as where the work was a derivative of both GPL work and work under a different licenses requiring some other restrictions.) And if the GPL + additional restrictions was the decision of the original author, it doesn't even have that effect (and what downstream effect it has is less clear.)
- mbrubeck 10y ago
  From the GPLv3, section 7: “If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.”
  - DannyBee 10y ago
    Dragonwriter is correct about GPLv2. You are correct about GPlv3. FWIW: This does not actually make it true :) I do not believe this is actually sufficient to override superseding written contracts with a complete integration clause. I think those superseding written contracts just cause a license violation instead. (IE the end result would be "you would be in breach of the written contract with the restriction", "they would be in breach of the GPL"). The GPL attempts to create privity through licensing through the original licensor, in order to try to make this work. It's not clear this will be successful in a court of law, however (I suspect this also varies by country). I believe the drafting committee that looked into this came to the same conclusion.
    - nkurz 10y ago
      This is the same way adding an explicit separate rights grant does not make a new license, it is just an explicit separate set of rights. Them's some strikingly lawyerly semantics. If I were to release a work without a license (governed by the default of copyright law), and then explicitly grant a few new rights that don't exist in the absence of that "set of rights", non-lawyers might be inclined to think of this as a "new license". Are you saying that it's a not a license if you unilaterally grant rights without requiring anything of the user, or is there something more subtle here? FWIW: This does not actually make it true :) Speaking of that, what's the extent of case law for open-source licenses? Is there a compilation somewhere of decisions that make for good background reading?
      - DannyBee 10y ago
        "Them's some strikingly lawyerly semantics." The law explicitly makes a difference between consistent additional terms/amendments and new agreements :) So i'm not shocked you find it this way, but it is what it is ... Basically, there is a difference between having an agreement that happens to be spread out over multiple things, and two separate agreements. If you next try to ask where that line is, without a complete integration clause, the answer is basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ without going to court. You will get different answers from different folks. "If I were to release a work without a license (governed by the default of copyright law), and then explicitly grant a few new rights that don't exist in the absence of that "set of rights", non-lawyers might be inclined to think of this as a "new license"." Well, this is a slightly different case. In this case, you had no rights at all, and you are giving rights for the first time. This probably semantically would be viewed as a new license. In the LLVM case, there is a license agreement. It is being supplemented :) "Speaking of that, what's the extent of case law for open-source licenses? Is there a compilation somewhere of decisions that make for good background reading? " Sadly, no. There's basically only one or two decisions you can find at all. The rest is basically viewpoints based on contract law.
DannyBee 10y ago
I'm very aware, i helped write the current exception used with GCC, et al :) Note that it only grants additional permissions, it contains no additional restrictions. Additionally, in the absolute worst case, and we screw it up, the GPL folks are in no worse a position than if we had just used apache2 without exceptions :)

by jordigh 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> The GPL has a no-added-restrictions clause Correct. > says that if you receive the work covered under the GPL and additional text that has additional restrictions, you may disregard the additional text. No, it doesn't (EDIT: as below, the GPLv3 actually does, I had forgotten this element of its changes from the GPLv2 in the additional terms area; there's good downthread discussion of this and its effects, I'm not going to revise the rest of this piece to address it.) It says that it is illegal to add additional restrictions to GPL covered work. It does not say that if you receive a work with the GPL and other restrictive text you may ignore the other restrictive text, nor is that its effect (its effect that if the author was legally obligated to release a work under the GPL because it was derivative of an upstream GPL-licensed work, then the author releasing it with additional restrictive text is in violation of the GPL and can be subject to whatever the legal system decides to assign as a sanction for that violation. Absent a decision by the legal system to do so, or compelling the author to do so, that doesn't give anyone else downstream permission to use that author's work other than under the conditions -- the GPL with the additional restrictions -- which they released it with.) And there are certainly situations where the legal system would not compel the distributor of the work distributed with the GPL + additional restrictions to allow it to be used GPL only (such as where the work was a derivative of both GPL work and work under a different licenses requiring some other restrictions.) And if the GPL + additional restrictions was the decision of the original author, it doesn't even have that effect (and what downstream effect it has is less clear.)

mbrubeck 10y ago
From the GPLv3, section 7: “If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.”
- DannyBee 10y ago
  Dragonwriter is correct about GPLv2. You are correct about GPlv3. FWIW: This does not actually make it true :) I do not believe this is actually sufficient to override superseding written contracts with a complete integration clause. I think those superseding written contracts just cause a license violation instead. (IE the end result would be "you would be in breach of the written contract with the restriction", "they would be in breach of the GPL"). The GPL attempts to create privity through licensing through the original licensor, in order to try to make this work. It's not clear this will be successful in a court of law, however (I suspect this also varies by country). I believe the drafting committee that looked into this came to the same conclusion.
  - nkurz 10y ago
    This is the same way adding an explicit separate rights grant does not make a new license, it is just an explicit separate set of rights. Them's some strikingly lawyerly semantics. If I were to release a work without a license (governed by the default of copyright law), and then explicitly grant a few new rights that don't exist in the absence of that "set of rights", non-lawyers might be inclined to think of this as a "new license". Are you saying that it's a not a license if you unilaterally grant rights without requiring anything of the user, or is there something more subtle here? FWIW: This does not actually make it true :) Speaking of that, what's the extent of case law for open-source licenses? Is there a compilation somewhere of decisions that make for good background reading?
    - DannyBee 10y ago
      "Them's some strikingly lawyerly semantics." The law explicitly makes a difference between consistent additional terms/amendments and new agreements :) So i'm not shocked you find it this way, but it is what it is ... Basically, there is a difference between having an agreement that happens to be spread out over multiple things, and two separate agreements. If you next try to ask where that line is, without a complete integration clause, the answer is basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ without going to court. You will get different answers from different folks. "If I were to release a work without a license (governed by the default of copyright law), and then explicitly grant a few new rights that don't exist in the absence of that "set of rights", non-lawyers might be inclined to think of this as a "new license"." Well, this is a slightly different case. In this case, you had no rights at all, and you are giving rights for the first time. This probably semantically would be viewed as a new license. In the LLVM case, there is a license agreement. It is being supplemented :) "Speaking of that, what's the extent of case law for open-source licenses? Is there a compilation somewhere of decisions that make for good background reading? " Sadly, no. There's basically only one or two decisions you can find at all. The rest is basically viewpoints based on contract law.

DannyBee 10y ago

I'm very aware, i helped write the current exception used with GCC, et al :) Note that it only grants additional permissions, it contains no additional restrictions. Additionally, in the absolute worst case, and we screw it up, the GPL folks are in no worse a position than if we had just used apache2 without exceptions :)