So... we do not have to take your advice, nor do we have to pay for your
advice, but if we re-distribute it, then you could take legal action to get
paid or stop us from distributing it? Now that its been archived on the
internet, how does that impact your legal rights ?
Jamie
On Wednesday 27 August 2003 07:20 pm, Joseph Carter wrote:
: On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 09:48:51AM -0700, justin bengtson wrote:
: > i'd like some help and constructive criticism with this, especially
: > regarding gaping holes. it's intended to be a "give credit where credit
: > is due" type of license. this is only a first draft... the name can
: > change! here goes...
:
: I understand why you might want a shorter or less verbose license than the
: GNU GPL, but I have to say that your license feels like it is trying to be
: a professional lawyer-grade license, without the understanding of
: Copyright law that should accompany authorship of such a license.
:
:
: First of all, you do not have to accept the GPL. The GNU GPL contains the
: offer of certain terms by which you may do things with software that the
: Copyright laws of most countries otherwise deny without permission of the
: Copyright holder. You can use a program all you like without having to
: accept the GPL terms. You just can't distribute it to other people, in
: any form, unless you do agree to those terms. This is an essential
: freedom, argues RMS: The right to make your own changes to your own copy
: of the program and keep them to yourself. You are also not required,
: under the GPL to give source code to everyone - just those who have access
: to the binaries. (Of course they can distribute both binaries and source
: as widely as they'd like to and the GPL does not forbid them from doing
: so.)
:
: Second, the whole plagarism thing. It is ILLEGAL, under Copyright law, to
: misrepresent the authorship of a work, in whole or in part. If I have
: taken your work and put my name on it in place of yours, I do not need a
: license clause to tell me that I'm doing something wrong, the law already
: says so. And under the law, it's Copyright infringement to misrepresent
: the origins of any work covered by Copyright. Legally a work in the
: public domain can be misrepresented in the US, but as it happens the rest
: of the world has this concept of Moral Rights which would prevent it.
:
: You can not, in the United States, place anything into the public domain.
: You can make the simple statement that you are doing so, but this is
: really a Copyright license. The law is written with the assumption that
: everyone wishes to profit from their work, no matter how trivial, and
: therefore all works which are not barred from Copyright protection, are,
: in fact, protected by Copyright. (If contested, you may have to prove
: that you indeed are the original creator and therefore owner of the
: Copyright, but there are ways to do that..)
:
: The GNU GPL, while a great legal-political document, is really a badly
: written license. A license explains the terms, pure and simple. The
: long-winded speech about what is right and good and fair in the world of
: Copyright law has little bearing on the license and detracts from the very
: simple question: What may I do with this pile of code? What may I not?
:
:
: I would be happy to offer more specific suggestions for your planned
: license, but there are some important things to think about in the above.
: As I am not an attorney and am not qualified to provide legal advice, you
: may outright disregard my comments. I do have some experience in this
: area, though.
--
Let's call it an accidental feature.
-- Larry Wall
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