Put it in laymen's terms

[Seth David Schoen]

bruce at perens.com writes:

> From: Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>
> > The point is that the developers have full authority to do so, whereas
> > in other circumstances one can't simply "withdraw" a published GPLed
> > contribution.
> 
> I've had a few hours to think about this, and I still categorize it as
> "legally true - but wouldn't happen".

Fair enough.

> I agree that Linus could have been more rigorous in his implementation of
> the exception, for example he could have required others to place it on their
> code before submission.
> 
> However, you can also take Linus' note as an interpretation of the scope of
> the GPL and not an exception at all.

That's actually what I think is the most plausible interpretation.  In that
case, it is only by courtesy and not by any legal necessity that it applies
to derived works.  Why do people send patches to Linus?  "In the hope that
[they] will be useful", no doubt.

> This is what makes me wish the GPL was more clear or what is derivation
> and what is fair use of an exported interface.

I also wish for this, although I'm sometimes pessimistic about whether
these problems can be resolved.

For instance, one might want to say that calling a program from the command
line can never constitute a derived work.  However, command-line arguments
can be added to any user-space program to exploit any functionality that it
provides -- so that a new version of any program could be produced with
command-line arguments and I/O all set up to make the program particularly
suitable for use from _within_ some other program via a simulated command-line
interaction.  Similarly, one might want to say that connecting to a program
with a TCP socket can never constitute a derived work.  But a program can be
modified to listed on a particular port and invoke its own functions,
printing their return values, whenever it's asked to do so by the process
on the other end.

These modifications cannot be forbidden under current licenses, and likely
not under the OSD.

-- 
                    Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>
      They said look at the light we're giving you,  /  And the darkness
      that we're saving you from.   -- Dar Williams, "The Great Unknown"
  http://ishmael.geecs.org/~sigma/  (personal)  http://www.loyalty.org/  (CAF)