[License-review] Sublicensing

[Richard Fontana]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2014 at 11:02:19AM -0400, Pamela Chestek wrote:
> I agree completely that it is not in the best interest of FOSS projects
> to encourage or allow sublicensing, which I believe is why the GPL took
> the position that it is a direct license. 

As a side note, GPLv2 and earlier versions of the GPL can be read as
having a confusing position on sublicensing (indeed if memory serves
Larry pointed this out in his 2004 book on open source licensing);
this is why GPLv3 contains a clause which clarifies the matter
(whether that was really necessary I'm not sure). The perception that
the GPL "prohibits sublicensing" has been raised in certain policy
debates recently concerning CLAs.

> My recollection is, too, that
> until the GPL came along, the common perception was that the correct
> vehicle for serial downstream distribution was through sublicensing,
> which is why the earlier licenses specifically allowed for it--but I'm
> sure you have more historical knowledge of that than me. 

Earlier FOSS(-like) licenses? I believe most did not explicitly allow
for sublicensing; for example this was true of the BSD family, and I
believe also the ancestors of the MIT/X11 license family (cf.
http://opensource.org/licenses/HPND).

I've assumed that the 'automatic licensing' provision that's been in
all versions of the GPL was inspired somehow by analogous
implementations of direct licensing in proprietary software licenses
in the 1980s, but I'm not sure that's historically correct.


- RF