[License-discuss] proposal to revise and slightly reorganize the OSI licensing pages

[Chris Travers]

On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 10:52 PM, John Cowan <cowan at mercury.ccil.org> wrote:
> Chris Travers scripsit:
>
>> I am not 100% sure but I think after the changes in 2010, exclusive
>> licensees are now assumed to have sublicense rights as well.
>
> An exclusive license is really a transfer of copyright ownership, and the
> entire bundle of rights (including the right to say what the license is)
> goes with it.  Existing licensees may be protected by promissory estoppel,
> but merely potentional licensees are not.

Not necessarily.  I don't see why one can't license some rights
exclusively to one party and other rights exclusively to another
party.


>
>> If I give a book publisher the right to sublicense my book, I would
>> assume at a minimum they could tell a magazine they could serialize
>> it, for example, and on what terms.  Presumably they could license an
>> excerpt to be published in an anthology and set terms (within certain
>> limits dependent on the contract with the publisher) for that
>> publication.  Maybe they could even negotiate movie rights.
>
> Indeed.  It used to be usual for the author to transfer all rights
> (making the publisher an exclusive licensee) and nail down profit-sharing
> in the contract, but nowadays publishers usually buy just enough rights
> for their immediate needs: for example, magazine publishers usually want
> "first serial rights".
>
>> A program linking to another
>> program is not "based on" that other program in that sense regardless
>> of the mechanism of linking any more than an anthology is based on the
>> pieces published therein.
>
> The question is whether the linked program is a derivative work of its
> parts or merely a collective work.  Larry says "collective", the FSF says
> "derivative".  Infinite are the arguments of mages.
>
But that's my point really.  This is an area where some people
disagree in good faith and hence it's an area which is more likely to
end up in court....   I don't know what this says about how robust a
license is though.

 Best Wishes,
Chris Travers