Re: Dumb Licensing Questions

[Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab@web.de>]

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Greg Troxel writes:

> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
>
>> It's clear that there are different standpoints. The linking thing (dynamic
>> or static) hasn't, AFAIK, tested in court. It's quite possible that different
>> courts reach different conclusions (in the same or different places in the
>> world). It's even possible (gasp!) that the legal interpretations of things
>> change over time.
>  
> Completely agreed.   And, to expand, copyright law doesn't talk about
> linking, it talks about things like "derived works", which leads to "if you
> do X, is it a derived work".
>
>> If I were you, I'd just comply with what the FSF proposes, and that is pretty
>> clear [1]. Any reasons not to comply with that?
>
> A very good point.  Stepping back, there is a question of what's legal
> and where the line is.  But there's another question of what individuals
> and the Free Software community think of as good behavior.  If someone
> writes software and makes it available under a Free License, politenss
> at least demands that those who copy/modify/distribute/use the software
> respect their wishes about what the license means.

Finally there’s the question what’s safe practice. There are three
cases:

1. safe ground: you don’t need to worry about legal issues.
2. murky waters: someone might sue you and you might win or lose.
3. clear breach: if you get sued, you lose.

Case 1 is "just assume you create a derived work and follow the
GPL". Just comply with what the FSF proposes.

Case 2 is madness if you don’t have a well-staffed legal team at your
disposal.

Case 3 is madness if you aren’t already in organized crime. And might be
madness even then (remember that many criminals got caught over tax
fraud. It would be ironic to see branches of the mafia get taken down
for breaching the licenses of the tools they distribute, while getting
away with murder).

Best wishes,
Arne

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