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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

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.
  - flanked-evergl 3y ago
    But we are talking about the GPL. If they used a different licence (as they eventually did after months of argument) it would not be relevant, but just the terms we got under GPL were not clearly sufficient, and their first response was "it's okay because we are fine with it". If it was an "it's okay because we are fine with it" in licence form, then it would not be GPL, but a different licence altogether.

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.
- flanked-evergl 3y ago
  But we are talking about the GPL. If they used a different licence (as they eventually did after months of argument) it would not be relevant, but just the terms we got under GPL were not clearly sufficient, and their first response was "it's okay because we are fine with it". If it was an "it's okay because we are fine with it" in licence form, then it would not be GPL, but a different licence altogether.