Automatic GPL termination

[Philippe Verdy]

The distributor acts as a proxy in the name of the original author. Of
course he has to follow the rules, but this is part of the independent
agreement between the distributor and the author, and does not affect the
relations that will link the users to the distributor, limited to conveying
the software, and to the author for all legal rights attached to the
software itself).

The difference comes when there's a litigation: a user that comes into
litigation related to the rights attached to the software has an agreement
from the author, not from the distributor that can't be a party to the
litigation, because it does not sublicence the software to the user, and has
no right to do so.

There may exist some cases where the distributor plays a role, but this is
extremely limited, as it involves only its role as an authorized
distributor.

If the software was distributor unlawfully by some unauthorized distributor,
such as by a distributor whose licence was terminated, then there's a
litigation related to that distribution, but this does not affect the
validity status of licences acquired by users, even if they got it from that
distributor, because the status is not determined by the distributor but by
the original licence initially provided by the author.

This is the spirit of the GPL, and of the CeCILL licence compatible with it.
In other words, the licencing scheme is flat, and definitely not
hierarchical. This is confirmed by the fact that a distributor cannot
restrict or extend the rights attached to the original licence. IT cannot
even restrict it in his own name, but may add rights only in his own name in
a separate agreement (additional rights, like warranty or support offers)
and may allow restricting these additional rights, but not any rights
attached to the original licence.

You will find NO term "sublicencing" in the original GPL and not even in
CeCILL... Managing a hierarchy of licences is costly and out of the
preoccupation of the original authors given that they don't directly control
the distribution and don’t know who are the effective users (no registration
required). Only a flat licencing system works under this scheme. There's
absolutely no way for free open-source authors to accept and manage
hierarchical licencing schemes. For this reason, it is absolutely required
that the licenced software remains linked to the original author by
preserving all copyright notices and a clear labelling of the original
licence (which cannot be changed by distributors, a requirement that is not
present in sublicencing schemes).

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : Alexander Terekhov [mailto:alexander.terekhov at gmail.com]
> Envoyé : jeudi 13 septembre 2007 18:56
> À : Stephane Dalmas
> Cc : verdy_p at wanadoo.fr; Chris Travers; John Cowan; lrosen at rosenlaw.com;
> dlw; license-discuss at opensource.org
> Objet : Re: Automatic GPL termination
> 
> On 9/13/07, Stephane Dalmas <stephane.dalmas at sophia.inria.fr> wrote:
> 
> [... "cessible" ...]
> 
> >  This is (probably) very different from what you mean by "sublicensing".
> 
> Okay. Let me try it this way: CeCILL allows distributors to (so to
> speak) upgrade license contract for subsequent distributions to future
> versions of it (and also mutate to the GPL, including its future
> versions, if contaminated).
> 
> "Any Software distributed under a given version of the Agreement may
> only be subsequently distributed under the same version of the
> Agreement or a subsequent version, subject to the provisions of
> Article 5.3.4." (Article 5.3.4 is about GPL contamination.)
> 
> What is that if not sublicensing by distributors acting as
> (sub)licensors in sublicensing contracts?
> 
> "Licensor: means the Holder, or any other individual or legal entity,
> who distributes the Software..."
> 
> Original licensor certainly can't be a party to a contract that isn't
> even drafted yet.
> 
> regards,
> alexander.
> 
> --
> "PJ points out that lawyers seem to have difficulty understanding the
> GPL. My main concern with GPLv3 is that - unlike v2 - non-lawyers can't
> understand it either."
>                                        -- Anonymous Groklaw Visitor
>