Hi Anthony!
On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:33:41 +0000, "Anthony W. Youngman"
<deb...@thewolery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>> Basically, you can choose which licence you want to apply to YOU. But
>>> you pass on my package as a whole (including my permission to choose
>>> which licence). So that's where your recipients get the same choices you
>>> got.
>>I pass your code and GPLv3, there is no requirement to pass your full
>>license grant.
> Just spotted something important :-)
>
> WITHOUT MY COPYING FILE your recipient has no evidence that the GPLv3
> bears any relevance to my code.
They have no evidences in any case. If they see some text like "this
program is licensed under GPL", how would they know that it was not
arbitrarily added by some third-party in the way?
> You've just stripped all licencing from my code and
In our imaginary case I've stripped only irrelevant licensing and have
kept everything relevant to GPLv3.
> that MOST DEFINITELY IS a pretty blatant GPL violation!
Can you please back at least some of your statements by anything aside
from your own words?
> So to sum up, the GPL (whatever variant) is meaningless on its own.
> Passing the code on without my licencing grant is a GPL violation. And
> the GPL does NOT give you permission to change my grant.
Here is my take on it. The requirements for preserving copyright
notices etc. are in the section 4 of GPLv3:
4. Conveying Verbatim Copies.
You may convey verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you
receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice;
Yes, I have published "Copyright 2009 Anthony W. Youngman".
keep intact all notices stating that this License and any
Yes, all references to GPLv3 preserved. References to everything else
(GPLv2, GPLv4+, BSD etc.) stripped.
non-permissive terms added in accord with section 7 apply to the code;
Let's suppose there are no non-permissive terms.
keep intact all notices of the absence of any warranty;
Yes, "No warranty" preserved.
and give all
recipients a copy of this License along with the Program.
Sure, GPLv3 attached.
If I modify your work I need to meet the conditions of the section 5
but this is not relevant to our discussion.
As a bottom line, all conditions of GPL (either version) are met,
GPL doesn't require to preserve license grants for any other licenses,
and requiring to preserve them is not permitted (at least under
GPLv2).
> My grant does give you the right to choose which licence applies to YOU.
> In fact, as I said elsewhere, you HAVE TO CHOOSE A SPECIFIC licence to
> apply to you.
Yes.
> If you choosing a specific licence stripped your
> recipients' right to choose which licence applied to them, there would
> be no point to the "or any later version" wording because that would be
> invalid for any recipient beyond the first person to get it direct from
> the copyright holder.
The point is that if I keep your full license grants then (and only
then) my recipients can choose a license. But if I keep only the
license which applies to me then they cannot choose a license.
Alexander Cherepanov
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