French translation of this article on [visit link]

Any comments are welcome, before I eventually make this URL more public for french readers.

I was just corrected on the definition of "non-exclusive" in a license, and I am wrong in my assumption.

Can't delete my post, so I'm admitting my mistake.

Ahh, but the GPL is not a "non exclusive" license - the exclusivity of it is that you must agree to abide by it's rules. This excludes those who wish to not pass on the work they have benefited from, charge fess and or licenses, etc.

As such, your point is moot.

We will see. IBM (and hundreds of other F/OSS companies) wouldn't be betting the farm on it if it was that unclear - they have very smart lawyers whose bread and butter is Licenses and Contracts, so if they don't understand it better than you (unless you are a lawyer), they're in the wrong job.

I won't be posting any more replies to this thread as you're obviously just trolling.

regards,
-cybervegan

> The GPL, however, is a license (most definately NOT a
contract) ...

OK I admit it's a LICENSE...

Here's what the Federal Appellate Courts hold about your
LICENSE:

"Generally, a 'copyright owner who grants a nonexclusive
license to use his copyrighted material waives his right to
sue the licensee for copyright infringement' and can sue
only for breach of contract." Id. at 1121 (quoting Graham v.
James, 144 F.3d 229, 236 (2d Cir. 1998) (citing Peer Int'l
Corp. v. Pausa Records, Inc., 909 F.2d 1332, 1338-39 (9th
Cir. 1990)). Thus, a licensee's breach of a covenant
independent of the license grant does not support a claim
for copyright infringement. See Effects Associates, Inc. v.
Cohen, 908 F.2d 555, 559 (9th Cir. 1990); Graham v. James,
144 F.3d at 236; Fantastic Fakes, Inc. v. Pickwick Int'l,
Inc., 661 F.2d 479 (5th Cir. 1981). However, a licensee does
infringe the licensor's copyright if it exceeds the scope of
the license. S.O.S., Inc. v.. Payday, Inc., 886 F.2d 1081,
1087 (9th Cir. 1989).

See the "Generally, a 'copyright owner who grants a
nonexclusive license to use his copyrighted material waives
his right to sue the licensee for copyright infringement'
and can SUE ONLY FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT." ?

Presumably someone wishes the GPL to be enforcable... so its
either a "contract" or you don't get to sue for enforcement
of the GPL. If you sue under contract law and find the
contracting party has exceeded his terms of scope, then
and ONLY then may you proceed to enforcement under 17 USC
sec 501 for copyright infringement.

Perhaps you should contact the Second, Fifth and Ninth
United States Circuit Court of Appeals and inform them of
your findings to the contrary so they may correct themselves
concerning this incompatibilty with GPL philosophy...

Daniel Wallace

>Unfortunately this license description is prohibited by
>law in most Federal Circuits. Without agreement to
>"payment requirements" or some other term qualitativly
>different from the rights granted in sec. 106 of Title
>17 (Copyright Act) your license is preempted under sec.
>301 due to the lack of an "extra element". Without an
>"extra element" different from "usage restrictions" the
>courts view these licenses as "schemes" to circumvent
>the Copyright Statutes

If it's the GPL you are referring to, then you are totally mistaken. The GPL depends copyright law, but does not alter or circumvent it in any way. Copyright law says that without written permission from the copyright owner, you have no rights to duplicate or otherwise reproduce a copyrighted work (apart from the notion of 'fair use') or to produce derivative works of it. Copyright is not an 'applied for' right (like patents) - it is automatic , and immediately granted upon the fixing of a work in tangible form (i.e. you can't copyright thoughts, only an 'impression' of them).

GPL software is copyrighted just like any other work. You have no rights under standard copyright law to copy it or form derivatives. The GPL, however, is a license (most definately NOT a contract) and grants you additional rights providing that you accept its terms - these additional rights include those of copying and deriving new works. As long as you accept the terms, and do not breach any of its conditions, you are entitled to exercise the additional rights that it grants you. You must, however, release any copies or derivatives under the same license terms, so that no-one is ever able to remove the existing rights of others to a GPL'ed work. In this way, it operates similarly to any other license agreement or EULA - without which you would have no right to use any licensed software. If copyright law worked the way you suggest, then no-one would ever be able to use any copyrighted material for any reason whatsoever - clearly not what the law is intended to mean.

Because it is a LICENSE, there is no requirement for payment. Unlike a contract, nothing needs to be signed, and nothing needs to be exchanged. Also, there is no expectation on the part of the LICENSOR for any consideration in respect of the LICENSE. The license also only comes into operation at the point at which you "distribute" a copy or derivative, meaning that you can keep as many personal copies or make personal derivatives as you like, but once you distribute, you have an obligation to provide the source-code upon request. It really is that simple - and so say the courts, too, both internationally and in the US.

There is nothing illegal or unenforceable about the GPL.

Hope that helps.

-cybervegan

I don''t think Sun has a lot to loose by going to the subscription based software model. When were they really making lots of money from selling Solaris? Buying Solaris was sort of a give me when purchasing one of their big boxes. I mean who really runs Sparc Linux on a Sun Fire?

For the past few years they have basically been giving away Solaris ($99 CD media kit)? Then Sun moved to a free downloads of Solaris on their website. Where Sun has been making fists full of money (in my opinion) is the support fees. Having a Sun Spectrum Silver (or better) support account entitles you a RTU for Solaris on your supported systems, contract/public updates, etc.. So in essence this is pretty much the same thing as a JDS subscription. I guess the difference lies that now you can poke around in the source, and the community can contribute fixes/features.

So I guess I don''t see all they hype.. seems like the same stuff, just repackaged... perhaps I don''t get it.

>The Commons is facilitated by a license that grants the
>rights that the community needs to function. The license
>will offer unrestricted access to the source code that >comprises the commons, unrestrained by either payment >requirements (gratis) or usage restrictions (libre).

Unfortunately this license description is prohibited by
law in most Federal Circuits. Without agreement to
"payment requirements" or some other term qualitativly
different from the rights granted in sec. 106 of Title
17 (Copyright Act) your license is preempted under sec.
301 due to the lack of an "extra element". Without an
"extra element" different from "usage restrictions" the
courts view these licenses as "schemes" to circumvent
the Copyright Statutes.

Daniel Wallace

This is not an original idea - even in the software world.

Microsoft for many years has already sold countless subscriptions to their MSDN.

Of course the OS is, itself, a subscription with ''issues'' every 2-3 years..

95, 98, 2000, etc..

Somehow, I am not convinced. It''s all very well to talk of a subscription-based business model, but I don''t think Sun can hope to gain a lot of revenue from something like the Java Desktop System (BTW, I consider Sun''s using ''Java'' in a product that has nothing to with Java pretty despicable, but hey, it''s their trademark). There are plenty of distros that already offer the goodies in the JDS [*]. May be I am missing something here, but I fail to see what differentiates Sun from other such vendors (other than the fact that Sun can call it the ''Java'' Desktop System).

Re: "Sun''s editorial view is to deliver high function, ease of use, data format and networking compatibility, low migration cost, re-use of existing hardware, escape from Windows viruses and security risks and minimal retraining." Nope, nothing unique here. If you remove Sun''s name from the above sentence and replace it with, say, Red Hat''s, nobody would notice.

Why has SUN been so inconsistent about its F/OSS alignment? It appears very "now we we will, now we won''t" at times.

Furthermore, why is the GPL nature of SUN JDS so stealthily hidden on the distribution CD? Why is the language used in the License so vague? Anyone buying this product would assume that they don''t have a right to the source code *or* to copy the software. Most of the operating system is GNU licensed, and a small proportion is SUN owned, so we understand that those bits we can''t copy, but why does SUN have to mislead people in this way, or has this changed?

SUN may have given us OpenOffice, and for that we''re thankful (the measure of how thankful is the continued development and improvement of it). At one point, I thought SUN had actually "got it" about F/OSS. I recently downloaded the SUN Java Runtime Environment, and read the License. Talk about invasive.

Pamela Jones of Groklaw.net said of the SUN Java Desktop: "There are so many restrictions that the license requires a booklet of amendments listing all the other things you can''t do under this or that special circumstance. The wording, he says, is unusually complex, and he suggests you have your legal eagles look the license over before you even consider making a buying recommendation on it. "

Makes you wonder. The F/OSS community will not praise SUN for such plundering - it seems that SUN is disregarding the very community it is taking from to produce the Java Desktop.

What a shame.

-cybervegan

So, after Solaris from Sun is open-sourced, all we need now is for MSFT to open up the file formats for Word documents so that programs like OpenOffice can correctly decode the formatting and we''ll all be waltzing toward the new promised land

Mr Simon Phipps, we like the sound of this!!