On Jul 24, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Alexandre Oliva wrote: >> 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. Those that use the term 'contract' for unilateral grants have a term to make the distinction. Say, in Brazil, the GPL is regarded as a "contrato benéfico" (=~ "beneficial contract"), i.e., a kind of contract in which only one of the parts becomes encumbered with obligations. I.e., the licensor grants the license and becomes required to respect the licensees' freedoms and to grant the same license to anyone who comes across the program and derived works thereof, whereas the licensee receives permissions (subject to conditions) to modify, copy and distribute the work and works based on it. >> 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 It doesn't have to be separately. You can grant multiple additional permissions along with the program. Have a look at GCC, and look for the additional permissions for say libjava, libstdc++ and libgcc. They're all different, but they're all part of GCC. And GCC is linked with libgcc. And GCC contains libiberty, that has files under many different licenses, and also files in the public domain. I.e., the whole is available under the GPL, but there are additional permissions for parts. > 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. The faulty assumption is the "you've agreed not to". See the other message I've just posted. >> 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. Not quite. In general, paying for a copy means you have to pay before you receive the license and the copy, and you don't even get permission to copy or distribute. In fact, in general such copies come with shrink-wrap license agreements (i.e., contracts) that try to take away even fair use right you might have. But the GPL requirements are different in an essential point: you don't owe the author anything whatsoever if you receive the program and just run it. Furthermore, even if you choose to modify, copy or distribute the program, you stil don't owe the author anything. The conditions set forth make it clear that you "owe" the *recipients* respect for their freedoms, and that there's nearly nothing you have to do to clear this "debt": offer them the source code you have, under the same terms and conditions you got yourself, and refrain from getting in their way should they want to enjoy their freedoms. -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} FSFLA Board Member ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
