SOS license

[Doug Hudson]

Re: SOS license...

>> 2. clear about what was a derived work
>
>Why should a license redefine what copyright law defines?
>


How it's defined in this license is useful to define a license breach, not
so useful to determine whether an actual copyright infringement has happened
though.  How derivative work language applies to software is a mess and a
half.

>> 3. permissive in allowing patch distribution under other license terms
>
>An author can *always* distribute patches under a license of their
>own choosing, at least by my reading of fair use.  Also, it looks like
>even if people modify the software for personal use, they have to publicly
>post their patches.


Sure, an author can distribute patches under whatever license they choose.
But if the original author doesn't like that license, or allow it under the
original program's license, applying that "unauthorized" patch to the
original program is a violation of the original license.  It's a violation
of the original author's adaptation right, I'd think; an actual copyright
violation, not just a license violation.  After the patch, the program is
otherwise substantially the same as before.  So, if I license my program
under a viral gnu license, and you write a patch under a restrictive
license, any use of that patch with my program violates my license.  Even if
you only use it for your own personal (or business) end, it's still probably
a license violation and a copyright violation.

Fair use doesn't allow me to go around, as much as I'd like to, offering
a -patch- to Internet Explorer that replaces the text and images with
anti-microsoft stuff, as much as I'd like to do exactly that.  (If I can do
this by running a seperate "shell" program or a script that doesn't alter
the IE code, it is not a violation.)

 Distribution and copying of another's work with your alteration is a "bad
thing" unless everything is open-sourced, or close to that.  There should
obviously be an exception here--if I write a hack that fixes a bug, I want
to distribute it...but the copyright owner has control over what's included
in his or her work in the end.

>> 4. explicit about how the "official" version of the software is
>> distributed
>
>That's not a copyright issue, it's a trademark issue, though the
>copyright license can tie the use of that trademark to rights granted by
>the license.


It can be a tm issue, but it's definately also a copyright issue.  When
people start messing with your software, it's like someone changing a
paragraph in your book.  You can license out how the "official" version is
distributed (up to a point) otherwise real-world products would be in big
trouble.

just my 2c...

Doug