Alexandre Oliva wrote:
But you must give up your freedom and rights or you are unable to
participate in distributing these things as part of a work that
contains any GPL-covered material.
The "or" denounces your syllogism. The "must" is inappropriate when
there's an alternative.
The alternative is not sharing any GPL-encumbered code at all. Do you
consider that a reasonable alternative?
As explained above, because of copyright law, you end up without that
freedom and right by default, even though you should have them.
You've inserted a radical political opinion there... You are entitled
to have it, of course.
The
GPL respects the freedom to (re)distribute the program that you're
entitled to,
Only if you choose the alternative of giving up your own rights.
restoring your right to do that which copyright law took
away, but not restoring your power to control how others can use the
work that you're using to derive another work you want to distribute.
I don't have a lot of power. Why should I give up any in order to share
code?
The GPL doesn't require you to give up anything.
It requires you to give up the ability to share anything but
GPL-encumbered parts in the covered work. And to immorally take away
that same ability to others who might contribute to it.
It only restores
some of your rights that copyright law took away, so that essential
freedoms are respected for you and for every other user.
Requiring contributors to give up their rights is not respecting
anyone's freedom.
But the point is that you also cannot impose fewer restrictions,
1. a grant of rights cannot possibly impose restrictions to whatever
you could do before you received those rights. It's a grant, so it
adds. It's not a contract, so it can't take away.
Per wikipedia, there are locations where is a difference between a
license and a contract and locations where a license is treated the same
as a contract. I won't pretend to know the difference except that it
means you are wrong in at least some places.
2. you can grant additional permissions as to any part of the whole,
if you're the copyright holder for that part. Nothing whatsoever
stops you from doing that: not copyright law, not any copyright
license.
You could make it available separately under a different or multiple
licenses but as part of a combined work the GPL says its own terms must
apply to all components of the work when any part needs acceptance of
the GPL to copy/modify/distribute.
Please point out any exception you can find to section 2b.
Here:
* Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
* modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
* are met:
* 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* 3. [rescinded 22 July 1999]
* 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
* may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
* without specific prior written permission.
additional permissions on top of those granted by the GPL. No matter
what the GPL says, you still have the permissions above as to any file
in which these permissions are written down.
But it doesn't matter that someone else has given you permission to copy
a part under different terms if you've agreed not to. At least not in
the locations where a license is treated like a contract. Or if you are
used to honoring your agreements.
What makes you think they're revoked just because the whole is under
the GPL?
Because you gave up the choice to use any other terms on a component
when you agreed to the GPL demand covering the work as a whole. You
agreed that "These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole."
Without that agreement you are restricted from distributing anything
covered by the GPL.
Only your flawed theory that the GPL imposes restrictions
that would somehow take away rights you had or received with the
program. Show what part of the GPL says "you give up rights you had
before", or that "imposes restrictions", or hire a lawyer to explain
this to you.
It is your agreement to its terms that impose these restrictions. Or
you have the copyright restrictions instead.
Note: "you may do X as long as Y" is not a restriction, it's a grant.
"you may not do Z under this license" is not a restriction, it's a
statement of fact, if doing Z requires permission from the copyright
holder.
It's at least equivalent to a requirement to pay for a copy. I might be
able to afford to pay some reasonable amount for a license, but I don't
have much power and can't afford to give any up - and I consider it
wrong to demand that from anyone else.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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