LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <ak1.linuxsa@topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 00:15:50 +0930

Re: Re: bsd- easier than you think

On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 11:56:33PM +0930, davidn@rebel.net.au wrote:
> Mark Newton <newton@atdot.dotat.org> wrote:
> > If I come up with (say) a bugfix for the Linux kernel, that bugfix may
> > not be distributed under any license except the GPL.
> 
> Simply not true.  If you come up with a bug fix you can distribute it,
> say as an english description, or maybe a unified patch with 0 lines of
> context, under any terms you choose.  You only have to consider GPL when
> you want to include GPL code with yours.  Obviously you can't distribute
> it in any truly useful form, but hey, that's because to be useful you have
> to include the original work, and none of that is your work or effort.
> 


That sounds dubious to me. The open source software licences put
restrictions on _derived_ works. I don't see how you can consider
a few lines of context plus bug fix to be a derived work. It isn't even
a work. I think you would find that this would be laughed out of court.
In fact, I don't think that a couple of lines of bug fix could
be considered a work that could have a BSD or GPL licence.
If a patch consisted of, say, 11,000 lines of code, then you could
obviously put a licence on that, and if it contained only, say,
30 lines of diff context, I reckon the original licence granter would
have great difficulty making the GPL stick to the patch.
Not only would the FSF likely lose, but the result of this would tend
to weaken the reputation of the GPL. So it wouldn't be in their interests
to fight such a battle.

An equivalent thing in literature would be something like a set of
commentaries on a novel where the commentaries refer to page and line
numbers of the original. I can't see that this would be illegal
unless someone merged the two together and tried to sell the combined work.
So in the case of the software patch, I imagine that someone could write
a patch under s different licence - and only if someone tried to
sell the patched combined work would they be in trouble.

Of course, lawyers can prove that the Sun rises in the West if you pay
them enough and if the opposition runs out of money to fight the case.
But I am supposing here that both defence teams have equal funds.
And of course, I am not even thinking of becoming a lawyer, ever!

Anyway, it's late...

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

-- 
LinuxSA WWW: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/ IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject