Re: Wasting our Freedom

Krzysztof Halasa
2007-09-17T20:35:47Z

"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> writes:

> Theodore Tso writes:

hardly

> Of course you don't need a license to *use* the derived work. You never need
> a license to use a work. (In the United States. Some countries word this a
> bit differently but get the same effect.)

Really? I thought you need a licence to use, say, MS Windows.
Even to possess a copy. But I don't know about USA, I'm told
there are strange things happening there :-)

> If, however, you wanted to get the right to modify or distribute a
> derivative work, you would need to obtain the rights to every protectable
> element in that work.

Of course.

> Read GPL section 6, particularly this part: "Each time you redistribute the
> Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically
> receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify
> the Program subject to
> these terms and conditions."

Seems fine, your point?
In addition to the rights from you (to the whole derived work),
the recipient receives rights to the original work, from original
author.
It makes perfect sense, making sure the original author can't sue
you like in the SCO case.

If A sold a BSD licence to B only and this B sold a proprietary
licence (for a derived work) to C, C (without that clause) wouldn't
have a BSD licence to the original work. This is BTW common scenario.

> To distribute a derivative work that contains protectable elements from
> multiple authors, you are distributing all of those elements and need the
> rights to all of them. You need a license to each element and in the absence
> of any relicensing arrangements (which the GPL and BSD license are not),
> only the original author can grant that to you.

Of course.

BTW: a work by multiple authors is a different thing than a work
derived from another.

> It is a common confusion that just because the final author has copyright in
> the derivative work, that means he can license the work.

Of course he (and only he) can. It doesn't mean the end users can't
receive additional rights.

Come on, licence = promise not to sue. Why would the copyright
holder be unable to promise not to sue? It just doesn't make sense.

> He cannot license
> anyone else's creative contributions absent a relicensing arrangement.

Sure, he can licence only his work, perhaps derived work.

Look at MS Windows - it's a work created by a single company, though
derived from other works, it's (C) MS and you get a licence for the
whole MS Windows from only MS.

You may have some additional rights and MS may have to acknowledge
additional contributors, based on their licences granted by those
contributors (such as using the original UCB licence).
--
Krzysztof Halasa