For Approval: The netX Public Lisense (in plain text)

[Matthew Flaschen]

Josh Berkus wrote:
> On 10/06/2010 05:23 AM, Christian Solmecke wrote:
>> (4) The License agreement shall always be concluded directly between
>> the owner of rights and the Licensee even if the latter obtained the
>> Program from a third party. Sublicensing or any other transfer of
>> rights shall be not permitted.
> 
> No sublicensing?  I'm pretty sure that's also a violation of open source
> criteria.

No it's not.  GPLv3 (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html)
explicitly says:

"Conveying under any other circumstances is permitted solely under the
conditions stated below. Sublicensing is not allowed; section 10 makes
it unnecessary."

GPLv3 section 10 says:

"Each time you convey a covered work, the recipient automatically
receives a license from the original licensors"

This is what is meant by "public license."  The netX Public License says:

"The License agreement shall always be concluded directly between the
owner of rights and the Licensee even if the latter obtained the Program
from a third party."

I think the effect is the same.

> What happens if Hilscher Gesellschaft für Systemaustomation mbH,
> Rheinstraße 15, 65795 Hattersheim/ Germany vanishes?  Do all extant
> copies of the program have to be returned?

No, the license is still valid, regardless of who owns the copyrights.

IANAL.  TINLA

Matthew Flaschen