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lease help me to sort this out. Apache says "legal limbo". I
suspect that this is nothing but yet another episode in the
"FSF Comedy" saga. I also don't quite understand the "You may
add Your own copyright statement..." provision in section 4
of the Apache License.
TIA... and enjoy it. ;-)
http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
Apache License v2.0 and GPL Compatibility
A lot of noise has been made recently about this brief
comment that was placed on the Free Software Foundation's
license comments page on 18 Feb 2004:
The Apache Software License, version 2.0
This is a free software license but it is incompatible with
the GPL. The Apache Software License is incompatible with the
GPL because it has a specific requirement that is not in the
GPL: it has certain patent termination cases that the GPL
does not require. (We don't think those patent termination
cases are inherently a bad idea, but nonetheless they are
incompatible with the GNU GPL.)
After spending a couple hours on the phone with the FSF, we
have a better understanding of the particular interpretation
of the GPL that might lead one to construe the following:
1. granting an explicit patent license causes any implicit
patent licenses to be null and void;
2. revoking that explicit patent license causes the person
who is claiming infringement of their patent to lose the
patent rights that would otherwise have been attained via
the GPL's implicit rights;
3. loss of patent rights means loss of right to use;
4. GPL section 7 allows a patent owner to claim infringement
of a patent within a GPL'd work and continue to distribute
that work as GPL up until a third party imposes a restriction
on the rights of others to distribute (i.e., until a
judgment or injunction is placed on the work).
5. GPL section 6 saying "You may not impose any further
restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights
granted herein" does not apply to patents because the
"rights granted herein" are only copyright.
This is our current understanding of the position held by
the FSF; whether or not our understanding is correct has
not yet been confirmed.
Note that this is contrary to our previously stated belief
that the GPL does forbid the continuing use of a GPL'd work
by an entity that has claimed the work contains infringement
of their own patented technology. Apparently, it is okay for
the distribution and use to continue up until a judgment or
injunction has been issued because the FSF does not believe
a claim of patent infringement amounts to a restriction on
the rights of others to redistribute, and the constraint on
further restriction applies only to those rights listed
within the GPL itself (copyright).
Thus, it is conceivable that an entity owning a patent that
is believed to be applicable to a GPL'd work may continue
to distribute that work as GPL even after they have made an
infringement claim, up until the point where that patent is
successfully used to hinder distribution of the work beyond
that provided by the GPL, at which point they would have the
choice of either terminating their own distribution under
the GPL or declaring something like "this patented
technology may be used royalty-free if the embodiment is
distributed under the GPL."
As such, it finally makes some sense as to why the FSF claim
of incompatibility was made. However, the above is based on
the assumption that a patent exists within the work, the
assumption that implied patent licenses on the GPL-covered
derived work would be compromised by an explicit patent
license within one of its parts, and the assumption that an
implied patent license is capable of being extended to the
making of new or modified copies of the work by someone other
than the patent owner. In any case, we do not believe that a
work which has no licensed patents from contributors could
ever be subject to the above restrictions, and thus it is
the presence of a successfully enforced patent that causes
incompatibility and not the license itself.
The Apache Software Foundation considers this issue to be
in legal limbo, at least until we get a definitive answer
regarding the survivability of implied patent licenses. We
are still working with the FSF in order to resolve the
issue, which may result in future changes to either or both
of our licenses. In the mean time, the FSF requests that
you do not consider the two licenses to be compatible. The
Apache Software Foundation believes that you should always
try to obey the constraints expressed by the copyright
holder when redistributing their work, even when those
constraints may be unclear. In the future, we hope that
the FSF will find a way to express their license terms
such that they are understandable by recipients of the
license, rather than requiring interpretation of the
people who wrote it.
Background
GPL compatibility is defined by the FSF, on that same
page, as: "This means you can combine a module which was
released under that [compatible] license with a GPL-
covered module to make one larger program." Compatibility
is enforced within the GPL by section 2b:
2b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish,
that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the
Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at
no charge to all third parties under the terms of this
License.
and reinforced by section 6:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work
based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives
a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or
modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions.
You may not impose any further restrictions on the
recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are
not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties
to this License.
The Apache Software Foundation is well aware of these
clauses and their purpose under copyright law: to ensure
that code distributed under the terms of the GPL remains
under the GPL. We have no desire to change the terms
under which GPL-covered software is distributed. However,
we do not share the same goals as the Free Software
Foundation. Our goals are focused on the support of
collaborative development. The only things we desire from
a license are protection of our developers from frivolous
lawsuits and giving everyone the right to use our code
however they wish, even when they redistribute our code
in non-open-source products.
In this case, we would like to enable people who are
producing GPL-covered products to use some of the software
libraries that we create and distribute under the Apache
License. That is one of the reasons we included the
following in section 4 of the Apache License:
You may add Y
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Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> wrote:
Please help me to sort this out. [...]
How? http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html#want
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MJ Ray wrote:
Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> wrote:
How? http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html#want
"Emails that MJR Likes". My, go back to incubator, you GNU bacterium.
regards,
alexander.
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Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> wrote:
MJ Ray wrote:
"Emails that MJR Likes". My, go back to incubator, you GNU bacterium.
I think that's a more honest title than "How to write good emails"
because people seem to argue endlessly about it. I also acknowledge that
it's arrogant at the end of the page, but it's self-defence.
All you do now is insult me. That's fine: I know I don't like you now :-)
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MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> writes:
Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> wrote:
I think that's a more honest title than "How to write good emails"
because people seem to argue endlessly about it. I also acknowledge that
it's arrogant at the end of the page, but it's self-defence.
All you do now is insult me.
Which does not particularly make you stand out.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
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