On Tuesday 04 September 2007, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote:

quoted text
> Hi Sunnz,

>

> On Wed, Sep 05, 2007 at 04:32:20AM +1000, Sunnz wrote:

> > > If the person chooses to use the GNU GPL they have to respect the

> > > GNU GPL's conditions, not the BSD ones.

> >

> > GNU GPL, however, only grants the right to re-distribute (under

> > certain conditions), but not re-license, right?

>

> No, the GNU GPL grants you the rights to

>  0. run it for any purpose

>  1. study & modify it

>  2. reditribution of pristine copies

>  3. redistribution of derivatives

>

> All this just like the BSD. However, unlike the BSD, it does so in a

> reciprocal level: if you redistribute in the conditions of 2. or 3.

> you must license it under these (the GNU GPL's) terms.

>

> > BTW, if satisfying requires in GPL would imply satisfaction of BSDL

> > anyway, no?

>

> It's closer to include than imply, if you want to use these terms,

> since satisfying the BSDL means allowing proprietary derivatives,

> which the GPL aims to forbid.

>

> Rui

Hi Rui,
You've been arguing in circles for days now but the real cause is there

are some things about how copyright law works which you need to

understand a bit better. Hopefully I can help.
Only the copyright holder can modify, remove or replace the licensing of

their copyrighted work. This is the law, and those silly license terms

which state you cannot remove the license are nothing more than being

overly redundant for the sake of idiots who do not know the law. Sadly,

most licenses state the bleeding obvious.
Unless the copyright holder specifically gives the recipient the right

to relicense the work, the license cannot be changed. In the case of

dual licensed, or better said, multi-licensed works, this law still

remains in effect.
Take the case of multi-licensed work of where there is no permission to

create derivative works (i.e. modifications). One of the available

licenses allows you to distribute verbatim copies of the work under

certain terms. The rest of the available licenses do not grant you the

right distribute copies.
As long as you are in compliance with the terms set forth by the one

particular license which allows distribution of verbatim copies, your

action of distributing copies is legal, regardless if all of the other

available licenses do not grant the right to distribute copies.
As you can see, the right to create copies must be specifically granted

by the copyright holder in order for the recipient to be legally able

to exercise that right. The same is true for all other rights protected

by copyright; They must be specifically granted by the copyright holder

otherwise they are illegal.
When given a choice between multiple licenses, the only choice you get

is which license you wish to *comply* with, but you *never* receive the

right to relicense the original work unless it is specifically granted.

Even if you are granted the right to create derivative works, the

copyright holder must specifically grant the right to modify, remove

and/or replace the licensing for you to be able to do so legally.
There is a vast and significant legal difference between creating a

derivative work from an original copyrighted work, and relicensing the

original copyrighted work. Unless the copyright holder specifically

grants permission to do these things, doing them is illegal.
Since the three multi-licensed atheros driver files never granted

permission to modify, remove or replace the licensing, it is illegal to

change the licensing in any way, and the code remains multi-licensed

regardless of the misguided patches.
If you create a GPL-Only licensed patch which modifies any of the

original work, you now have a legal contradiction. If you apply the

patch and claim the resulting derivative work is now GPL-Only, you've

just broken the law because you were never granted the right to

relicense the original. On the other hand, if I apply the GPL-Only

patch and say the resulting derivative work is now multi-licensed like

the original work, I may also be breaking the law... This is the reason

why companies like TrollTech take the time to make sure all patches to

the dual-licensed Qt toolkit have amicable licensing, otherwise they

reimplement the changes on their own.
When you think of this legal contradiction in the terms of a patch that

fixes an off-by-one security vulnerability, and the obvious need to

apply the identical fix to the original, you'll see the precedence will

go with the licensing of the original work. Otherwise I'd be filthy

rich from researching exploits on Microsoft software, copyrighting the

fixes and then holding them for ransom to the highest bidder.
Who would be willing to pay me more for the *RIGHT* to fix the

vulnerability; Microsoft for the sake of supporting their own products,

or organized crime for the sake of having an exploit that Microsoft

would never be able to legally fix?
Obviously, the law doesn't work that way and the licensing of the

original work takes precedence over the licensing of any addition or

modification.
If you happen to be a GPL advocate, think about it this way: as you've

probably guessed, the linux kernel is multi-licensed where ever there

is a statement like "GPL Version X or any later version." Liuns

Torvalds has taken a strong stance about retaining GPLv2 on the linux

kernel source code in his tree. If someone took all that source code

and relicensed all of it as GPLv3, as the copyright holder (on some of

it) Linus would be rightfully furious, and he would have very solid

cause for legal action against whoever broke the law by doing such a

disrespectful thing.
You not required to agree with Linus, and you are not required to

respect Linus, but you are required to follow the law or you will most

likely suffer the consequences.
By modifying the licensing of the original work on the three

dual-licensed atheros driver files, the GNU/GPL/FSF people have done

something blatantly illegal, and blatantly disrespectful. Any lawyer

who advocated or advised such an obviously illegal action could hear

from their respective bar association about the matter and it seems

some of the lawyers from the FSF/softwarefreedom, as well as Eben

Moglen, signed off on this particular malpractice:
 http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=118857712529898&w=2

(they have all been cc'd)
Everyone understands the good intent behind the entire atheros driver

debacle was for the author of the derivative work to promote his

license of choice, namely the GPL. Every advocate has the same intent

of promotion. The serious problem here is the illegal act of modifying,

removing or replacing original licensing on multi-license works.

Ironically, doing this does not promote the GPL, but instead it weakens

the legal standing of the GPL. Anyone can now take the supposed GPL

derivative work, use it in a proprietary closed source product, never

comply with the GPL terms because they chose to comply with the now

missing alternative licenses, and then easily beat the GPL into the

ground in a court of law, and hence, set legal precedence for defeating

the GPL on a wider scale. Definitely not good.
Your personal promotion of your ideals as defined by your license of

choice is great as long as you think it through, but when you fail to

think it through, the most likely result is your are only doing damage

to your ideals by weakening the legal protection you wanted to achieve.
I hope Luis Rodriguez takes the time to rethink his changes with greater

insight and foresight before things get any worse than they already

are. The "legal hell" he mentioned is far from over, and unfortunately,

it's probably just beginning. Though good folks at the

FSF/softwarefreedom have made a mistake in their practice of law with

their advice on the atheros issue, it's really just a little "bug" in

need of fixing, and I would much prefer to see them correct their

mistake on their own, so we can end all of this nonsense amicably.
Kind Regards,

Jonathan C. Roberts