Re: GPL is like a cancer

[Alexander Terekhov]

Rahul Dhesi wrote:
[...]
> On what basis are you denying copyright owners the right to delegate
> licensing authority to others?

Do you mean sublicensing (outright assignment of exclusive rights
aside), Rahul?

The act of sublicensing ("delegate[d] licensing") is what happens 
when a licensee becomes a licensor to some other party by granting 
some or all of the exclusive rights that they received as a 
licensee. 

The thing is that nonexclusive copyright licenses are generally 
indivisible as a matter of law (this is referred to as "settled law" 
in every source you can find) unless the licensing contract states 
otherwise. This means that a nonexclusive license does not carry an 
implicit sublicense agreement. With the exception of the MIT License 
(which contains a sublicense clause), permissive licenses generally 
do not include a sublicense right and instead offer a direct grant 
of rights from the original licensor to any recipient of source code 
released by him or her under that license. 

Actually, according to the 9th Circuit, exclusive licensees are not 
transferable or sublicenseable either unless the licensing contract 
states otherwise. See Gardner v. Nike, a case which appears to  have 
surprised a lot of lawyers at the time: 

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/pubs/annrev/exmplrs/csum/gardnervcsum.pdf
 

I also note that GNUtards seem to insist on tying the concept of 
"relicensing" to the concept of the GPL "compatibility": 

http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/barcelona-rms-transcript.en.html 

"The idea is that there are some other Free Software licences which 
are compatible with the GPL meaning that if a program is released 
under one of those licences, that licence gives, effectively, 
permission to relicence under the GPL. There are two ways that can 
happen. Some licences explicitly say "you can also use this program 
under the GNU GPL". In other cases, it's because the licence is so 
permissive that to relicence it under the GNU GPL is permitted." 

This doesn't seem to be a smart idea on GNUtards part because it 
makes the public domain and BSDL-like permissive licensed code 
without sublicense grant totally GPL incompatible! 

Stop being utter retard, Rahul.

regards, 
alexander. 

-- 
http://gng.z505.com/index.htm 
(GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can 
be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards 
too, whereas GNU cannot.)