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I worked for a Multinational US company that was doing business with a Scandinavian company. The Scandinavian company wrote a GPL plugin to our software and wan

I worked for a Multinational US company that was doing business with a Scandinavian company. The Scandinavian company wrote a GPL plugin to our software and wanted us to make contributions to it. We didn't think we could do that and still be within the terms of the GPL, they insisted that we could because they would be fine with it.

_puk 3y ago
As the author of the GPL code they have the authority to dual licence it, so surely the fact that they state they are fine with it (especially if in writing) would be enough? I'd worry the other way, if you're contributing to the GPL code, you'd need to relinquish your rights to any IP contributed to the third party.
- flanked-evergl 3y ago
  Our concern was not that our contribution would be GPL licensed, our concern was that we didn't have permission under GPL to distribute the contributions even if we were fine with them being GPL licensed. For details as to why we were concerned, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins - for any company that should be a clear signal to stay away. An employee of a company saying it's fine in an email is also not issuing another licence. We did suggest they use another licence than GPL, which they eventually did after months of arguing with them that just saying "it's okay because we don't care" makes no material difference to us and that GPL does not unambiguously provide us permission to do what they want us to do.
  - _puk 3y ago
    Hah, yeah, an employee saying that without executive authority would be a big no. But according to this [0], I read it as quite clearly not allowed to GPL a plugin for distribution within a non free program, even if the plugin was unmodified. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPluginsInNF https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPluginsInNF
    - flanked-evergl 3y ago
      But that is contingent on whether it is one work on not, which in GNU's speculation depends on how it's linked, which is not clear how to understand this for Python, and the intimacy of the communication, which is not something which we can objectively measure. We believed it would likely be one work, the plugin’s author believed it would not be. All of this was just months of wasted energy, spending arguing about licence terms instead of coding.
VagabundoP 3y ago
Of course it was fine, they were the copyright holder. I assume your contribution copyrights were transferred to the other company? As they were publishing the whole plugin as GPL.
- flanked-evergl 3y ago
  > I assume your contribution copyrights were transferred to the other company? I'm not sure why you would assume this, but it would not have happened. Furthermore, given this https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins - and given there were no exceptions in the plugin, it just seemed like a complete mess to us. Of course the Scandinavian company disagreed because, as I said, they figured we should not care because they are okay with it. Just quoting from above: > It depends on how the main program invokes its plug-ins. If the main program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, and they establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or shipping complex data structures back and forth, that can make them one single combined program. A main program that uses simple fork and exec to invoke plug-ins and does not establish intimate communication between them results in the plug-ins being a separate program. > If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single combined program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins. If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, but the communication between them is limited to invoking the ‘main’ function of the plug-in with some options and waiting for it to return, that is a borderline case. I think it's strange how you can be entirely sure about something which the GNU is not sure about, but the thing is neither the GNU's speculation or yours would be relevant, it would have to go through costly and time consuming litigation to know for sure. Why would anyone want that?
  - BenjiWiebe 3y ago
    I think where they are coming from is that the copyright holder has the power to pick any license, multiple licenses, or make up a license. So they can give you rights that the GPL doesn't, as they are the copyright holder. IANAL so I don't know exactly how it would be made legally binding, but they do have that power.

_puk 3y ago

As the author of the GPL code they have the authority to dual licence it, so surely the fact that they state they are fine with it (especially if in writing) would be enough? I'd worry the other way, if you're contributing to the GPL code, you'd need to relinquish your rights to any IP contributed to the third party.

flanked-evergl 3y ago
Our concern was not that our contribution would be GPL licensed, our concern was that we didn't have permission under GPL to distribute the contributions even if we were fine with them being GPL licensed. For details as to why we were concerned, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins - for any company that should be a clear signal to stay away. An employee of a company saying it's fine in an email is also not issuing another licence. We did suggest they use another licence than GPL, which they eventually did after months of arguing with them that just saying "it's okay because we don't care" makes no material difference to us and that GPL does not unambiguously provide us permission to do what they want us to do.
- _puk 3y ago
  Hah, yeah, an employee saying that without executive authority would be a big no. But according to this [0], I read it as quite clearly not allowed to GPL a plugin for distribution within a non free program, even if the plugin was unmodified. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPluginsInNF https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPluginsInNF
  - flanked-evergl 3y ago
    But that is contingent on whether it is one work on not, which in GNU's speculation depends on how it's linked, which is not clear how to understand this for Python, and the intimacy of the communication, which is not something which we can objectively measure. We believed it would likely be one work, the plugin’s author believed it would not be. All of this was just months of wasted energy, spending arguing about licence terms instead of coding.

VagabundoP 3y ago

Of course it was fine, they were the copyright holder. I assume your contribution copyrights were transferred to the other company? As they were publishing the whole plugin as GPL.

flanked-evergl 3y ago
> I assume your contribution copyrights were transferred to the other company? I'm not sure why you would assume this, but it would not have happened. Furthermore, given this https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins - and given there were no exceptions in the plugin, it just seemed like a complete mess to us. Of course the Scandinavian company disagreed because, as I said, they figured we should not care because they are okay with it. Just quoting from above: > It depends on how the main program invokes its plug-ins. If the main program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, and they establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or shipping complex data structures back and forth, that can make them one single combined program. A main program that uses simple fork and exec to invoke plug-ins and does not establish intimate communication between them results in the plug-ins being a separate program. > If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, and they make function calls to each other and share data structures, we believe they form a single combined program, which must be treated as an extension of both the main program and the plug-ins. If the main program dynamically links plug-ins, but the communication between them is limited to invoking the ‘main’ function of the plug-in with some options and waiting for it to return, that is a borderline case. I think it's strange how you can be entirely sure about something which the GNU is not sure about, but the thing is neither the GNU's speculation or yours would be relevant, it would have to go through costly and time consuming litigation to know for sure. Why would anyone want that?
- BenjiWiebe 3y ago
  I think where they are coming from is that the copyright holder has the power to pick any license, multiple licenses, or make up a license. So they can give you rights that the GPL doesn't, as they are the copyright holder. IANAL so I don't know exactly how it would be made legally binding, but they do have that power.