1:50 a.m.
On 01/27/2013 01:52 AM, Joshua Gay wrote:
Let's say I lose my rights under §11 to the Covered Work. Could I
ask a
friend to give me a copy of the same Covered Work under the GNU GPL
version 3 (via section 10) and then redistribute the covered work under
the GNU GPL version 3?
This is a *very* interesting question. It raises a problem that arises
much more generally in free software. It is what I call the "magic
relicensing problem". The general approach has been to sweep this
under the rug.
It also relates closely to a question @vanden was raising on identi.ca
- he asked whether the basic copyleft requirement in section 5
conflicted with section 10.
The "right answer" to your question has to be 'no'; the question is
how to get there. One approach is to do nothing since (a) your
hypothetical isn't realistic, after all, and (b) the solution I'm
thinking of might destroy the nice, simple signal section 10 gives
about GPL/AGPL compatibility and put us in GPLv3 (or Creative
Commonsish) stylistic territory.
The solution I'm thinking of is that section 10 should be limited to
'Derived Works'. After all, why would one ever need to distribute
copyleft-next under GPL/AGPL other than in what the FSF, certainly,
would consider a 'Derived Work' scenario (using the terminology of
copyleft-next -- a 'work based on the Program' or 'modified version'
in GPLv3 parlance). Going further, maybe section 10 should be folded
into section 5. You can Distribute a Derived Work under one of the
following licenses:
i) this License
ii) a Later Version (unless We have explicitly said you can't)
iii) GPLv2, AGPLv3, or later versions
If that were the case, then (let's say I'm the copyleft-next upstream
licensor) your friend can't give you an unmodified version of the same
work under GPLv3. He or she can give you a 'Derived Work' licensed
under GPLv3. However, I don't think this means I am giving *you* a
GPLv3 license as to what I wrote.
(Think of similar facts, except my code is BSD-licensed -- and suppose
violaton of the BSD license has results approximately as harsh as
under copyleft-next and GPLv3.)
Maybe §11 could be explicit about what "new licenses"
means, perhaps
something along the lines of: "Termination of Your rights disqualifies
You from receiving new licenses covering the Received Work (including
any future version of this license or those listed in section 10 of this
license)."
That's kind of like another way to get at the solution I'm suggesting.
This definitely goes into the Nonexistent Issue Tracker. I think
whether to do something about this depends mainly on how ugly the
result is.
- RF