[sword-devel] Still more about licencing

[Chris Little]

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Lynn Allan wrote:

> Is anybody else noticing that we are getting what seems to be contradictory
> information about the GPL license?

Well, there are two aspects to this.  First, the letter.  The letter of 
the license is rather clear.  It wasn't written by a lawyer, but by a 
programmer, so it isn't full of legalese.  You can take my word on what 
the license says if you don't understand it clearly yourself.  As an 
alternative you can confirm my statements with gnu-legal.

Any truth can be inverted or negated to form a falsehood.  This is the 
case in most of Eeli's email.  Outright falsehoods outnumber truth by 
better than 5 to 1.  I could sit here and claim that the world is flat and 
that 2+2=5 and that up is down as long as I want.  Those claims would all 
still be completely false, and you should reject them as outrightly as you 
should Eeli's statements.  You might consider the fact that Eeli never 
gives references to those passages of the GPL that justify his most absurd 
claims, whereas I do, in my response, quote those sections that completely 
refute his claims.

The second aspect is the spirit of the license.  If, by some episode of
mass negligence, everyone who ever licensed work under the GPL mistakenly
missed some mis-phrased sentence of the GPL, in which some of its claims
were voided or negated, it wouldn't really make a difference.  Why?  
Well, because there is a huge body of work regarding what the GPL
means--all those articles in Linux journals, Business journals, software
project pages, and Slashdot.  They all spell out what developers clearly
intend for their software when they apply the GPL license to it.  In 
contract law, the intentions of the parties can make up for deficiences or 
even negate portions of actual written contracts.  And when you erode the 
permissions that the GPL grants developers, you reduce it gradually to 
straight, all rights reserved, copyright (not to public domain as some 
would apparently wish).  And then derivative works become illegal 
derivatives in violation of copyright.

> <Alert ... please do not read rest of post if you have already had quite
> enough of this scribbler's opinions>
> 
> Although admittedly uninformed, I have never been a fan of the GPL. I am a
> strong believer in copyright, intellectual property, and property rights. I
> believe the USA founding fathers knew what they were doing when they
> established the Copyright Office. Was it specified in the Constitution?

Derek answered this much better than I could.  But I will note that the 
Constitution (written by the founders) does form the basis of our 
copyright laws.  The Copyright Office, however, was established during the 
McKinley administration in 1879.  I'm pretty certain that none of the 
founders were present. :)

> I tend to feel the net result of Richard Stallman's well intended "copyleft"
> is anti-intellectual.

I feel the net result of Richard Stallman's well-intentioned coining of 
the term "copyleft" was a bad idea.  I think it is a silly term, usually 
used by the obstinate, the ignorant, and, generally, those opposed to free 
software and free choice in software development in order to malign free 
software by utterly mischaracterizing those who would develop it as a 
ruthless band of copyright-denying brigands.  The truth of us is actually 
quite the opposite, and quite odd to characterize as "anti-intellectual".  
This is an admitted generalization, but a great many of those involved in 
free software tend to be more educated than those who are not.  There are 
an inordinate number of free software developers working in universities 
and also vast numbers of university faculty members who are free software 
advocates, even if not developers themselves.  So, while Richard 
Stallman's term, "copyleft", has become silly by no fault of his 
own--rather by the intentional mischaracterization of adversaries to 
software freedom, the characterization of "copyleft" as 
"anti-intellectual" is just plain wrong.
 
> While we remain on "this side", our fallen natures seems to call for
> copyright rather than copyleft. This may be morbid, but one of the reasons I
> look forward to my death is to get away from all this "crud". I get as weary
> of people as they no doubt do of me :-(
> 
> I would probably prefer to release LcdBible and the InVerse Scripture
> memorization freeware to the Public Domain than use the GPL as it seems to
> be understood on The SWORD Project.

You're free to release LcdBible and InVerse in the public domain, but you
may not use the SWORD Project if you do so.  GPL licensing is the price
you pay if you want to use GPL work.  It ensures that that work remains 
open and free.

Suppose you released these programs under BSD, with source code.  Now
suppose that VerseMonger software decides they want to use your software 
as a base for their new product UltraVerseMonger2000.  They take your 
stuff, add proprietary code to allow it to read enciphered Bibles and a 
search mechanism that will search every Bible in under a second, and sell 
it.  Then never release that additional code.  They do a couple releases, 
then go out of business and disappear, their code disappearing with them.  
Meanwhile, you've been developing your fork, adding a few features that 
never appeared in UltraVerseMonger2000, which you could have added if you 
had access to their code.  And none of their features could ever be added 
to your code because it wouldn't be economically beneficial to them.  Now, 
tell me, how on earth can you consider this situation good?

The GPL means that the SWORD Project will always be free.  It will always 
be open.  Its enhancements will always be available to the public.  If 
BibleTime adds a cool new feature and we decide we want to implement it in 
the API or in BibleCS, we can copy that code and do so.  If VerseMonger 
software wants to use the SWORD Project as the basis for their software, 
they can, but enhancements they make have to be made available so that we 
can integrate them back into our own version if we want to.

--Chris