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The GPL states that any derivative work created by combining the GPL'd work and another work must be licensed under a GPL-compatible license. Violating any cla

by tedks 12y ago

The GPL states that any derivative work created by combining the GPL'd work and another work must be licensed under a GPL-compatible license. Violating any clause of the GPL revokes your copy of the license. So if I'm a company that distributes GPL'd binaries without providing corresponding source (a legal term in the GPL that means the preferred version of the source that a developer would edit, so decompiled code does NOT satisfy the license), I lose that license and am violating the copyright of the original author. In this case, Wolvereness' code has been incorporated into a derivative work, with other code (the Mojang decompilation) that isn't licensed compatibly with the GPL. Note that the form of the copyrighted work (the Mojang Minecraft server) is irrelevant. Mojang's copyrighted work is there, whether it's decompiled or in binary form or in any other form. The work is the same, much in the same way a vinyl record, a digital file, and a live performance all can contain the same copyrighted work. I don't think this is weird at all; this is a very straightforward case of GPL incompatibility. If Wolvereness wanted to include an exception for linking to the Mojang server, he could have done so using the infrastructure in the GPLv3, or with a special exception in the GPLv2. Mojang has definitely violated the GPL, and as such they have no claim to Wolvereness's license. Wolvereness is the party with standing here.

tzs 12y ago
Didn't he implicitly include a GPL exception when he contributed his GPL code to a project that was not GPL? If I'm understanding this correctly, CraftBukkit purports to be GPL, but includes disassembled, deobfuscated code that they did not own and was not available under a GPL compatible license.
- tedks 12y ago
  No. There's no such thing as an "implicit" GPL exception. You're right that the original CraftBukkit project equally violated the GPL, but now that Mojang is distributing it, they're the ones liable for the violation.
  - tzs 12y ago
    > No. There's no such thing as an "implicit" GPL exception. You don't think a court would use some equitable doctrine such as estoppel to find that if I explicitly contribute my code to a project with the intent that they include it and distribute it, I am giving them whatever licenses is necessary to allow that?
    - gillianseed 12y ago
      Eh, no. A software licence is a set of 'conditions for use' which you apply to code you have written and/or to which you have copyright. Unless you as a copyright owner explicitly allow use under other licenses/conditions, then that's it. This is basic copyright law, it doesn't matter if it's GPL or BSD etc.
      - tzs 12y ago
        (I'm going by US law here, which may not necessarily be applicable in this case although if someone is issuing DMCA takedown requests then presumably at least some of this is under US law). A non-exclusive copyright license in the US does not need to be explicit or be written. It can be implied. One court noted, "An implied license can be found where the copyright holder engages in conduct from which the other party may properly infer that the owner consents to his use" [1]. I'd say that a copyright holder submitting his code to a project for inclusion in the project allows the project to properly infer that the copyright owner consents to the project using his code, and so supports an implied non-exclusive license to use the code. That implied license would be revocable, so if the author changes his mind he can tell the project to stop using the code, but would almost surely not be able to sue for damages over the past use. (Major exception: if the copyright holder was paid for the contribution, that might make the license irrevocable). Implied non-exclusive licenses are limited in scope, but as far as I have been able to tell there is no good objective way to tell what the scope is. If I post a comment on a forum (let's assume nothing in the TOS that I purportedly agreed to said anything about copyright), it is generally believed that I am granting them in implied non-exclusive license to display my content on the forum, and giving an implied non-exclusive license to other forum posters to quote my post in theirs without limit. But what if the forum wants to publish a "best of" book and include my post? Does the implied non-exclusive license cover that? In "Goldstein on Copyright" (one of the top two references on US Copyright law--the other being Nimmer), he says of the various cases on implied licenses and their scope, "The fact patterns of these cases suggest a close connection between implied copyright licenses and the doctrines of laches and estoppel", so I think I was on the right track suspecting that estoppel could play a role. Unfortunately, for more info that cite a section in the book that was not covered in the Google Books preview I was reading, and much as I would like owning a copy of Goldstein, it is way over my law book budget (it's almost $1000...about 1/3 the price of Nimmer). [1] Field v. Google Inc., 412 F. Supp. 2d 1106, 1115-16 (D. Nev. 2006)
- makomk 12y ago
  Even if the GPL did work that way, I believe he actually contributed his code to Bukkit which is a seperate project that doesn't contain the decompiled code from the Minecraft server at issue here. That code then got reused in CraftBukkit.
  - tedks 12y ago
    ...That's irrelevant. It's still his code and still his copyright.

by tedks 12y ago

tzs 12y ago

Didn't he implicitly include a GPL exception when he contributed his GPL code to a project that was not GPL? If I'm understanding this correctly, CraftBukkit purports to be GPL, but includes disassembled, deobfuscated code that they did not own and was not available under a GPL compatible license.

tedks 12y ago
No. There's no such thing as an "implicit" GPL exception. You're right that the original CraftBukkit project equally violated the GPL, but now that Mojang is distributing it, they're the ones liable for the violation.
- tzs 12y ago
  > No. There's no such thing as an "implicit" GPL exception. You don't think a court would use some equitable doctrine such as estoppel to find that if I explicitly contribute my code to a project with the intent that they include it and distribute it, I am giving them whatever licenses is necessary to allow that?
  - gillianseed 12y ago
    Eh, no. A software licence is a set of 'conditions for use' which you apply to code you have written and/or to which you have copyright. Unless you as a copyright owner explicitly allow use under other licenses/conditions, then that's it. This is basic copyright law, it doesn't matter if it's GPL or BSD etc.
    - tzs 12y ago
      (I'm going by US law here, which may not necessarily be applicable in this case although if someone is issuing DMCA takedown requests then presumably at least some of this is under US law). A non-exclusive copyright license in the US does not need to be explicit or be written. It can be implied. One court noted, "An implied license can be found where the copyright holder engages in conduct from which the other party may properly infer that the owner consents to his use" [1]. I'd say that a copyright holder submitting his code to a project for inclusion in the project allows the project to properly infer that the copyright owner consents to the project using his code, and so supports an implied non-exclusive license to use the code. That implied license would be revocable, so if the author changes his mind he can tell the project to stop using the code, but would almost surely not be able to sue for damages over the past use. (Major exception: if the copyright holder was paid for the contribution, that might make the license irrevocable). Implied non-exclusive licenses are limited in scope, but as far as I have been able to tell there is no good objective way to tell what the scope is. If I post a comment on a forum (let's assume nothing in the TOS that I purportedly agreed to said anything about copyright), it is generally believed that I am granting them in implied non-exclusive license to display my content on the forum, and giving an implied non-exclusive license to other forum posters to quote my post in theirs without limit. But what if the forum wants to publish a "best of" book and include my post? Does the implied non-exclusive license cover that? In "Goldstein on Copyright" (one of the top two references on US Copyright law--the other being Nimmer), he says of the various cases on implied licenses and their scope, "The fact patterns of these cases suggest a close connection between implied copyright licenses and the doctrines of laches and estoppel", so I think I was on the right track suspecting that estoppel could play a role. Unfortunately, for more info that cite a section in the book that was not covered in the Google Books preview I was reading, and much as I would like owning a copy of Goldstein, it is way over my law book budget (it's almost $1000...about 1/3 the price of Nimmer). [1] Field v. Google Inc., 412 F. Supp. 2d 1106, 1115-16 (D. Nev. 2006)
makomk 12y ago
Even if the GPL did work that way, I believe he actually contributed his code to Bukkit which is a seperate project that doesn't contain the decompiled code from the Minecraft server at issue here. That code then got reused in CraftBukkit.
- tedks 12y ago
  ...That's irrelevant. It's still his code and still his copyright.