[Fwd: FW: For Approval: Generic Attribution Provision]

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ben Tilly (btilly at gmail.com):
> On 12/14/06, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> >Quoting John Cowan (cowan at ccil.org):
> >> David Dillard scripsit:
> [...]
> >> There are dozens of reasons for incompatibilities between various
> >> OSI-certified licenses.
> >
> >This, however, is immiscibility of two codebases under the _same_ licence.
> 
> Is this new?
> 
> Suppose that I have 2 GPLed programs, and one exercised their rights
> under section 8 to, say, deny distribution in the USA due to patent
> concerns.  Wouldn't merging the two involve sublicensing the one that
> did not exercise their rights under section 8.  If so, then that is
> prevented by section 4 of the GPL.  Therefore it is at least possible
> that those two GPLed program might not be able to be merged.

I believe you've just described a patent obstacle, not a licensing one.

The derivative work would be lawful, hence not in violation of copyight 
everywhere in the free world^W^W^W^Woutside the USA -- and also in the
USA after elimination or expiration of that patent threat.

(BTW, it is not clear to me that sublicensing occurs in your
hypothetical:  GPLv2's grant is explicitly _directly_ from the copyright
holder to all lawful recipients who accept its terms.)

-- 
Cheers,           A mosquito cried out in pain:       The cause of his sorrow
Rick Moen         "A chemist has poisoned my brain!"  Was para-dichloro
rick at linuxmafia.com                                   Diphenyltrichloroethane.