On Friday, 14 March 2003, Russell Nelson wrote: Lawrence E. Rosen writes: > OK, guys, play with me one more round. This time, let's do it in the > form of a law school exam question and let's get the lawyers and IANALs > on this list to chime in: Nahhh. None of this is necessary. There's nothing in the AFL that says that you must use the same license on derivative works. Therefore, without reference to any other terms of the AFL, it is trivially compatible with the GPL insofar as derivative works get licensed under the GPL. Period. End of discussion. It's GPL-compatible. The only question is whether RMS will admit to making a mistake. No, that's not quite right. We do have to resolve one question, which is whether the effect of the AFL is to pass through the patent- retaliation provision on code which is relicensed. If so, the AFL does not permit relicensing under GPL, because GPL 2(b) requires that no additional terms be added to GPL'd code during modification and redistribution. So, here's the one case we need to be sure we agree about: A publishes program FOO under AFL. B modifies FOO by combining FOO with preexisting GPL'd code to make GOO, and releases under GPL. C modifies to make HOO, distributes under GPL, and later sues A alleging patent infringement by A in another program released under AFL. What's the result here? If C cannot continue to distribute HOO, the AFL has succeeded in imposing additional conditions not only on the FOO part of HOO, but also on other GPL'd code with which it is combined; this would be a modality for evading GPL.
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