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Integrate text describing copyright holders.

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The enforcement section now has an integrated paragraph describing how
enforcement relates to copyright, and refers back to a related section
much earlier in the tutorial.
This commit is contained in:
Bradley M. Kuhn 2014-11-10 16:46:50 -05:00
parent 8e360c9db8
commit 2ce793aa05
2 changed files with 18 additions and 18 deletions
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27
compliance-guide.tex
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@ -52,21 +52,20 @@ post-violation responses to the concerns of copyright holders.
\chapter{Background}
% FIXME-URGENT: integrate and correct
Copyright law grants exclusive rights to authors. Authors who chose copyleft
seek to protect the freedom of users and developers to copy, share, modify
and redistribute the software. However, copyleft is ultimately implemented
through copyright, and the GPL is primarily and by default a copyright
license. (See \S~\ref{explaining-copyright} for more about the interaction
between copyright and copyleft.) Copyright law grants an unnatural exclusive
control to copyright holders regarding copyright-controlled permissions
related to the work. Therefore, copyright holders (or their agents) are the
ultimately the sole authorities to enforce copyleft and protect the rights of
users. Actions for copyright infringement are the ultimate legal mechanism
for enforcement. Therefore, copyright holders, or collaborative groups of
copyright holders, have historically been the actors in GPL enforcement.
Copyright law grants exclusive rights to authors. The ``preclusive'' use of
copyleft to protect users’ rights still leaves the authors, as copyright
holders, or their agents in the sole position of enforcers or protectors of
their users’ rights. Actions for copyright infringement are the ultimate
legal mechanism for enforcement, and copyright law allows only a copyright
holder or her agent to bring an action for infringement. There also exist
community efforts at compliance that help copyright holders in enforcement of
their rights, but only the copyright holders or their legal representatives
can actually initiate enforcement proceedings in the legal system.
%FIXME-URGENT: END
Early GPL enforcement efforts began soon after the GPL was written by
The earliest of these efforts began soon after the GPL was written by
Richard M.~Stallman (RMS) in 1989, and consisted of informal community efforts,
often in public Usenet discussions.\footnote{One example is the public
outcry over NeXT's attempt to make the Objective-C front-end to GCC

9
gpl-lgpl.tex
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@ -336,10 +336,11 @@ created as a community-oriented ``answer'' to the existing proprietary
software licensing mechanisms. Thus, first, consider carefully why
proprietary software exists in the first place.
% FIXME-URGENT: integrate
The primary legal regime that applies to software is copyright law. % FIXME-URGENT: END
Proprietary software exists at all only because it is governed by copyright
law.\footnote{This statement is admittedly an oversimplification. Patents and
\label{explaining-copyright}
The primary legal regime that applies to software is copyright law.
Proprietary software exists at all only because copyright law governs
software.\footnote{This statement is admittedly an oversimplification. Patents and
trade secrets can cover software and make it effectively non-Free, and one
can contract away their rights and freedoms regarding software, or source
code can be practically obscured in binary-only distribution without