Tarball licenses (was: Free documentation licenses)

[John Cowan]

Rick Moen wrote:

> Seems almost like homeopathy, doesn't it?  None of Alice's code may
> remain in A1, but (as you say) its being a derived work remains, and
> thus the obligation to conform to Alice's licence terms persists.

And of course the reason homeopathic pills don't work is that the efficacy of
pills depends on the current state, not the historical origin.

Another example is the ship of Theseus, which could be found in Athens
(in what we'd call a museum) some 500 years after Theseus's death.
Every plank had long since been replaced, but the conceptual integrity
of the object remained intact.

> Which raises the interesting question of 4.4 BSD (and progeny) as a work
> derived from AT&T System V UNIX.

>From 32/V, actually.  CSRG was careful never to even look at any AT&T code
form System III or System V, although in order to receive older BSDs you had
to get a System V license, because AT&T wouldn't sell any other kind.

> I seem to recall that the Computer
> Science Research Group strategy going into the lawsuit involved gradual
> replacement of AT&T code.  They did this primarily because the AT&T code
> sucked, but it's widely considered that this was having the effect of
> gradually creating a non-proprietary codebase.

Each individual component of the 32/V base was replaced by something that
was copyright-independent of it (neglecting include files and the like,
which are not really copyrightable).  AT&T would have a hard time
claiming copyright over 4.4BSD as a whole on the above ship-of-Theseus
argument, though, because the relationships as well as the individual
modules had been utterly transformed.  The 32/V system, e.g., did not
even have paging.

> Are you saying that
> interpretation is wrong, and that, but for the lawsuit settlement, BSD
> would have remained subject to AT&T's licence terms even after all AT&T
> code was gone?

No.  AT&T's claim was that some of their code was *not* gone, particularly
in certain drivers.  The University claimed independent invention, and
pointed out that AT&T's hands were not clean either: they had appropriated
some old-BSD licensed code while ignoring the advertising requirement.

> > If you are aware that infringing derivative works have been created,
> > and you do nothing....
> 
> But that's an additional hypothetical, above and beyond just "inaction".

It was you who said "it's pretty clear that Beirne doesn't object".
How is it clear?

-- 
There is / one art                   || John Cowan <jcowan at reutershealth.com>
no more / no less                    || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things                   || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness                 \\ -- Piet Hein