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It is always useful to fall back to basic when ever people try to redefine copyleft or GPL. A copyright license is a list of complex permissions. Nothing more,

by belorn 7y ago

It is always useful to fall back to basic when ever people try to redefine copyleft or GPL. A copyright license is a list of complex permissions. Nothing more, nothing less. If you have a two set of permissions, compatibility is the logical conclusions of finding intersection and see which actions are permitted in both set. Set theory do not have submissive and dominant sets. The intersection is always the elements which are in both A and B. The parity license says "Make sure every part of the source code is available under this license or another license that allows everything this license does". It practically spells out that permissions in the intersection that lies between parity and an other license is acceptable to use when combining parity with an other license. It is true. It also true for any other copyright license, including GPL.

hyperpape 7y ago
Set theory doesn’t, but this isn’t pure set theory, it’s a social process (perhaps it’s game theory, though I don’t think you have to really use math to get the point ). The GPL came first, so it effectively forces others to submit or to go it alone.
- belorn 7y ago
  Copyright is the entity that came first. A copyright license is the object you can use to claim you have permission to do something which copyright declares illegal by law. We can put gpl first when trying to determine the intersection of all the set of permissions when dealing with multiple licenses, but in the end the fundamental question to be answered is: Do you have a set of permissions to do something which copyright makes illegal. Yes/No. In the case of multiple copyrighted work you need permission for all that which copyright limits in those cases. If we want to look at it from a game theory perspective it we would ask who the agents are, their goals, the environment and the resources. Here a narrow intersection can be a cost, or it can be irrelevant depending on context. The biggest permission is always to write it yourself which make the limitation of copyright a non-issue for the author. Naturally that is not the only factor, nor the only agent, so it all depend.
kemitchell 7y ago
You’re technically correct, and I think set theory is a very productive metaphor for the analysis. But that analysis with GPL hasn’t worked out so cleanly, however, due to its complexity. Even GPLv2 is a relatively long license. It attempts to spell out copyleft in relatively low-level terms, legally speaking. Add on additional cleverness, like anti-TiVo and liberty-or-death, and it becomes very hard to say where the boundaries are, or to compare them to less idiosyncratic licenses.
- belorn 7y ago
  It is fair to say that a complex description of permissions is harder to define and compare than a simple description. GPLv3 attempts to be international interpreted across different copyright laws and to a degree different languages, which makes the job even harder. But it also fair to point out that the basic permissions are fairly simple. Give the recipient source code of the whole work, put it under the same license, don't do something which a judge would deem as circumventing the authors intention of giving you those permissions. The above simplified version of copyleft would likely work fine, although I suspect every lawyer on the globe would hate it.
  - kemitchell 7y ago
    > The above simplified version of copyleft would likely work fine, although I suspect every lawyer on the globe would hate it. I’m familiar with several who do not!

by belorn 7y ago

hyperpape 7y ago

Set theory doesn’t, but this isn’t pure set theory, it’s a social process (perhaps it’s game theory, though I don’t think you have to really use math to get the point ). The GPL came first, so it effectively forces others to submit or to go it alone.

belorn 7y ago
Copyright is the entity that came first. A copyright license is the object you can use to claim you have permission to do something which copyright declares illegal by law. We can put gpl first when trying to determine the intersection of all the set of permissions when dealing with multiple licenses, but in the end the fundamental question to be answered is: Do you have a set of permissions to do something which copyright makes illegal. Yes/No. In the case of multiple copyrighted work you need permission for all that which copyright limits in those cases. If we want to look at it from a game theory perspective it we would ask who the agents are, their goals, the environment and the resources. Here a narrow intersection can be a cost, or it can be irrelevant depending on context. The biggest permission is always to write it yourself which make the limitation of copyright a non-issue for the author. Naturally that is not the only factor, nor the only agent, so it all depend.

kemitchell 7y ago

You’re technically correct, and I think set theory is a very productive metaphor for the analysis. But that analysis with GPL hasn’t worked out so cleanly, however, due to its complexity. Even GPLv2 is a relatively long license. It attempts to spell out copyleft in relatively low-level terms, legally speaking. Add on additional cleverness, like anti-TiVo and liberty-or-death, and it becomes very hard to say where the boundaries are, or to compare them to less idiosyncratic licenses.

belorn 7y ago
It is fair to say that a complex description of permissions is harder to define and compare than a simple description. GPLv3 attempts to be international interpreted across different copyright laws and to a degree different languages, which makes the job even harder. But it also fair to point out that the basic permissions are fairly simple. Give the recipient source code of the whole work, put it under the same license, don't do something which a judge would deem as circumventing the authors intention of giving you those permissions. The above simplified version of copyleft would likely work fine, although I suspect every lawyer on the globe would hate it.
- kemitchell 7y ago
  > The above simplified version of copyleft would likely work fine, although I suspect every lawyer on the globe would hate it. I’m familiar with several who do not!