[License-discuss] License compatibility - reg

[Lawrence Rosen]

Rick Moen wrote:
> For a given copyrighted property or set of properties, a court is 
> going to be looking to determine the licensors' actions (what they 
> have permitted and subject to what conditions), and be primarily 
> guided in the case of a written licence by the licence text, and to 
> some degree possibly by other indicators such as licensors' actions
> and statements.

I agree with Rick, although in the FOSS context that isn't enough. WHICH of
the licensors do you look to?

For example, Mr. Satyanarayana plans to combine (in some way) Apache 2.0 and
GPLv3 code under a GPLv2 license. Apache licensors say "That's wonderful! Go
ahead and do that!"  The GPLv2 authors -- not a party to this transaction,
by the way -- say "We don't like that."

Who does Satya listen to? And who does his downstream licensee listen to?
And who does OSI suggest that any of us listen to on an important FOSS
combination/project like this one?

/Larry

-----Original Message-----
From: Luis Villa [mailto:luis at lu.is] 
Sent: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 1:28 PM
To: License submissions for OSI review
Subject: Re: [License-review] License compatibility - reg

I did not notice this was on the license-review list. Please move it to
license-discuss or somewhere else; it is not appropriate for license-review.

[My apologies to everyone on this list for not catching and moderating the
off-topic thread earlier.]

Luis

On Wed, Jun 26, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> Quoting Matthew Flaschen (matthew.flaschen at gatech.edu):
>
>> I think the FSF position is relevant.  Listening to the license 
>> stakeholder is a conservative approach.
>
> If I might ask, relevant to what?
>
> For a given copyrighted property or set of properties, a court is 
> going to be looking to determine the licensors' actions (what they 
> have permitted and subject to what conditions), and be primarily 
> guided in the case of a written licence by the licence text, and to 
> some degree possibly by other indicators such as licensors' actions and
statements.
>
> As I've pointed out before when this matter has come up in the past, 
> the licence drafter is -- in the general case -- not the licensor at all.
>
> If I read your implication correctly, you are saying that the licence 
> drafter's views, external to the licence text, are relevant to 
> determining what the licensors have decreed in choosing that licence.
> It seems to me that this claim falls through a large logic gap.
> (Also, it's at odds with jurisprudence.)
>
> I'm not sure by what measure what you say is 'conservative', but the 
> bigger problem is that it doesn't appear to pass the test of relevance.
> (My view, yours for a small fee and waiver of reverse-engineering 
> rights.)
>
> --
> Cheers,                 Snowden is accused of giving information to "the
enemy".
> Rick Moen               He gave information to the American people.  Well,
now
> rick at linuxmafia.com     we know who the enemy is.             --- Steven
Brust
> McQ! (4x80)
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