When to evaluate dual licenses

[Wilson, Andrew]

Arnoud Engelfriet wrote: 

>John Cowan wrote:
>> Smith, McCoy scripsit:
>> > If that's the case, then does Bob (the intermediate distributor
between
>> > author Alice and buyer Carol) owe any obligation to Carol to
provide
>> > source and/or installation information to Carol?  Could he not just
say
>> > "your license is from Alice -- go get it from her!"
>> 
>> Source, yes, by the terms of either GPL.  Installation information,
>> clearly no under the GPLv2; possibly, under the GPLv3, depending on
>> the device.
>
>The thing is that Carol needs Installation Information and/or the
>anti-DRM promise from Bob, not from Alice. That's why Carol needs
>to show that Bob is bound by GPLv3.

This little thought experiment is actually quite interesting.
So far, we have established

a) Bob is a licensee of Alice (because unless he has accepted some
   form of GPL, he has no rights to distribute Alice's code)
b) as a licensee under GPL, Bob has certain obligations with respect
   to his downstream distributees, e.g. Carol
c) these obligations are different between V2 and V3, therefore
d) if Alice originally offered Bob a choice of GPL versions,
   Bob, to make sure Carol is fully informed of her GPL rights, should
--
   if he has exercised his choice of licenses -- clearly inform Carol
   which version of GPL he has chosen.

So, we've established that distribution does potentially matter.
Distributors are licensees themselves and may exercise their GPL
rights, such as removing section 7 additional permissions
from V3 code, or electing a specific version when offered "GPLv2 or
later"
by an initial developer.

Cheers

Andy Wilson
Intel open source technology center