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He's a PHP maintainer posting on mastodon. If code is GPL, all future modifications of that code must also be GPL. It worries me that people in that thread se

He's a PHP maintainer posting on mastodon. If code is GPL, all future modifications of that code must also be GPL. It worries me that people in that thread seem to be wildly misunderstanding what the GPL does. The license isn't even that long to read.

MrJohz 2y ago
I think you may also be misunderstanding the GPL here, though. If you obtain a copy of a project under the constraints of a GPL license, then, if you distribute that project, or a secondary project built using that project, you must also provide the source (plus modifications) alongside the project. There are some caveats about what "built using" means, and what it means to distribute a project to users, but this premise is broadly true for most forms and variants of GPL-family licenses. The thing that allows relicensing to work is that GPL applies to the distribution of software. Linux isn't, per se, "GPL code", but rather when I download a copy of the Linux kernel, I'm downloading that under the provisions of the GPL license. But the person who wrote the source code does not have to licence the project to themselves. And they can choose to distribute further contributions to the project - or indeed the original contributions - under a new license. Where this gets a bit more complicated is that most open source projects made up of contributions from a variety of people. Each of these contributors owns the copyright - and therefore distribution rights - to their code. For this reason, many organisations require you to sign a CLA to contribute code to a project, which signs over some rights to the project itself (or its core maintainers) and allows them to distribute your code under their choice of license. Alternatively, some projects will ask all contributors to a project for permission to relicense the code, and rewrite code where they couldn't get permission. So the statement you make, that all future modifications of that code must also be GPL, is untrue. It is definitely the norm, because relicensing code is complicated and rarely done, and people who use GPL seem mostly satisfied with continuing to use it indefinitely. But it is perfectly legal for an organisation who owns the copyright to a given project to relicense that project under a completely different license. (Although they cannot revoke the original licence for the code they've already released.)
- nxicvyvy 2y ago
  Is removing the GPL license from source code allowed by the license? The FSF owns the copyright to the license, not the source code authors. The license even states that they copyright the source code to protect your rights, does that mean by adding the license you're giving copyright to the FSF?
  - MrJohz 2y ago
    The FSF did not add the license to your source code, though. You did that (or another contributor), and the FSF gave you permission to use the text of their license. Adding the license does not assign copyright to the FSF.
    - i_read_news 2y ago
      To follow: this is the reason the FSF has specific guidelines on contributions. https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignment-at-the-fsf https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignmen... > In order to make sure that all of our copyrights can meet the recordkeeping and other requirements of registration, and in order to be able to enforce the GPL most effectively, FSF requires that each author of code incorporated in FSF projects provide a copyright assignment, and, where appropriate, a disclaimer of any work-for-hire ownership claims by the programmer's employer. That way we can be sure that all the code in FSF projects is free code, whose freedom we can most effectively protect, and therefore on which other developers can completely rely.
    - nxicvyvy 2y ago
      Thanks for explaining, sounds like I'm in the wrong here indeed! Maybe GPL isn't strong enough, do we need something that also requires forfeiture of copyright? It probably isn't that important for most people.
      - pabs3 2y ago
        Forfeiture of copyright would mean it becomes public domain and there are no longer any restrictions on distribution/modification. If you mean transfer of copyright to an organisation aiming to maximise software freedom for end-users, then Software Freedom Conservancy is willing to receive copyrights and enforce the GPL and other code licenses. Probably the FSF is willing to do that too. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/ https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/

MrJohz 2y ago

I think you may also be misunderstanding the GPL here, though. If you obtain a copy of a project under the constraints of a GPL license, then, if you distribute that project, or a secondary project built using that project, you must also provide the source (plus modifications) alongside the project. There are some caveats about what "built using" means, and what it means to distribute a project to users, but this premise is broadly true for most forms and variants of GPL-family licenses. The thing that allows relicensing to work is that GPL applies to the distribution of software. Linux isn't, per se, "GPL code", but rather when I download a copy of the Linux kernel, I'm downloading that under the provisions of the GPL license. But the person who wrote the source code does not have to licence the project to themselves. And they can choose to distribute further contributions to the project - or indeed the original contributions - under a new license. Where this gets a bit more complicated is that most open source projects made up of contributions from a variety of people. Each of these contributors owns the copyright - and therefore distribution rights - to their code. For this reason, many organisations require you to sign a CLA to contribute code to a project, which signs over some rights to the project itself (or its core maintainers) and allows them to distribute your code under their choice of license. Alternatively, some projects will ask all contributors to a project for permission to relicense the code, and rewrite code where they couldn't get permission. So the statement you make, that all future modifications of that code must also be GPL, is untrue. It is definitely the norm, because relicensing code is complicated and rarely done, and people who use GPL seem mostly satisfied with continuing to use it indefinitely. But it is perfectly legal for an organisation who owns the copyright to a given project to relicense that project under a completely different license. (Although they cannot revoke the original licence for the code they've already released.)

nxicvyvy 2y ago
Is removing the GPL license from source code allowed by the license? The FSF owns the copyright to the license, not the source code authors. The license even states that they copyright the source code to protect your rights, does that mean by adding the license you're giving copyright to the FSF?
- MrJohz 2y ago
  The FSF did not add the license to your source code, though. You did that (or another contributor), and the FSF gave you permission to use the text of their license. Adding the license does not assign copyright to the FSF.
  - i_read_news 2y ago
    To follow: this is the reason the FSF has specific guidelines on contributions. https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignment-at-the-fsf https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2014/spring/copyright-assignmen... > In order to make sure that all of our copyrights can meet the recordkeeping and other requirements of registration, and in order to be able to enforce the GPL most effectively, FSF requires that each author of code incorporated in FSF projects provide a copyright assignment, and, where appropriate, a disclaimer of any work-for-hire ownership claims by the programmer's employer. That way we can be sure that all the code in FSF projects is free code, whose freedom we can most effectively protect, and therefore on which other developers can completely rely.
  - nxicvyvy 2y ago
    Thanks for explaining, sounds like I'm in the wrong here indeed! Maybe GPL isn't strong enough, do we need something that also requires forfeiture of copyright? It probably isn't that important for most people.
    - pabs3 2y ago
      Forfeiture of copyright would mean it becomes public domain and there are no longer any restrictions on distribution/modification. If you mean transfer of copyright to an organisation aiming to maximise software freedom for end-users, then Software Freedom Conservancy is willing to receive copyrights and enforce the GPL and other code licenses. Probably the FSF is willing to do that too. https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/ https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/