Historically, this project used (more-or-less) a file-by-file copyright
inventory. This commit ends that practice. The project now has a
single toplevel copyright inventory, stored exclusively in
comprehensive-gpl-guide.tex (so that it appears also in compiled
versions of the Guide as well).
The side-effect of this commit is that the parts may no longer be easily
publishable separably without (at least) the additional work of
copyright notice reconstruction. This may in particular create a
challenge for the FSF, who has historically selectively published
sections of this Guide as materials for its CLE classes.
However, without this change, this Guide will eventually suffer from the
inherent problems in maintaining file-by-file copyright inventory.
Circumstances simply dictate a single, top-level copyright and license
notice for the entire Guide.
In addition to consolidation of copyright notices, I've also herein
updated my historical copyright notices to properly credit me for my own
work done in 2003 through 2005.
I've also updated the license notice to reflect the changes made by the
previous commit and related issues.
As alluded to in 2ea19b71d4 's commit
message on 2014-12-17 19:52:15 -0500, keeping any information on a
part-by-part basis is difficult and error-prone, since there exists no
reliable way to auto-generate such information accurately.
Therefore, citations to third-party works, in addition to remaining
fully documented in the commit log as they always have been, are now
placed in specifically one location in the body of the text itself: a
single appendix specifically designed for that purpose.
In this manner, contributors have no house-keeping work regarding
citations. Contributors need only list third party works and links in
one place: third-party-citations.tex.
Documentation in CONTRIBUTING.md for making contributions of third-party
works is left as a TODO.
The lists of authors in each part has been continually out of date and
incomplete. There are multiple examples, here are a few:
* In September 2005, John Sullivan made improvements and was not placed on
the Authors lists until I did so in a March 2014 commit.
* In March 2014, Martin Michlmayr submitted many patches, but was not
placed on the Authors lists until I did so in an April 2014 commit.
There is no easy way to keep these Authors lists current, and they aren't
necessary under CC-BY-SA-4.0 anyway, so I herein remove the Authors lists.
Additionally, previous commit added "published sources" in each part, which
is more static and easier to keep up to date and provides similar
information.
References and details regarding these published works from which some
text was incorporated already appeared in the commit logs in great
detail. The information, already fully available in the Guide's Git
logs in full compliance with CC-BY-SA-4.0 §3(a)(1-2), now appears in
summary form additionally in the compiled PDF/HTML/Postscript output.
This paragraph was from text brought through from another document, and
as such, while this section was built "around it", the text itself was
stylistically different and otherwise problematic. This change brings
it into form with the rest of the document.
I think this sounds better. While "enforcement" is a noun and therefore
it seems it should be "pluralizable", "enforcements" wasn't in my
dictionary as a correctly spelled word, and that made me realize I'd
never heard "enforcements" used in a plural before, and it immediately
sounded weird. So, I changed it.
The unicode ’ was introduced by the pasted text mention in the previous
commits. While I believe LaTeX can be configured to accept Unicode
quote equivalents, it seems simpler to me merely to replace the
character with an appropriate version that LaTeX expects in this
situation by default.
The inspiration for this section came from the pasted text, which
ultimately whitewashed this well-known and complex situation. While my
new text likely has the biases inherent in a COGEO-oriented focused
document, so perhaps future patches that soften that side of it would be
helpful.
However, I believe generally that the new section describes the
situation substantially better than the terse pasted text that lauded
it.
Finally, this section is written to build up to some level of crescendo,
since the conclusion immediately follows it.
Again, upon careful reading of the pasted text, it was clearly not
as useful as it first appeared, and is in fact somewhat misleading.
This rewrite does a better job explaining the necessary focus required
for an M&A situation. The section could use some work, but generally
speaking IMO this new does a better job than both the pasted text and
other texts on the issues I've read elsewhere.
Upon closer inspection, this pasted paragraph contained a clear error:
as written. Specifically, it stated that compliance was automatic if
you merely "pass along" the CCS received from upstream. It's IOTTMCO
that this is wrong. I've corrected it and integrated the text.
Upon a more detailed reading, it's clear this pasted text belongs in the
LGPL license analysis section, but that in fact some other text was
needed to improve the end of the section on LGPL in the compliance
guide.
Since so little material is currently given on LGPL compliance, it's
likely best to link back to the chapter on LGPL compliance.
Besides, I don't think there really is anything additional the
compliance guide can add regarding LGPL compliance, other than the
detail license analysis on LGPL already available in that part of the
text.
(Note labels had to be added for the chapters that didn't previously
exist.)
Much of the existing pasted text had subtle condescension toward
developers, which I've cleaned up here. Admittedly, I may have over
compensated and added subtle condescension toward lawyers.
After rereading this text a few times, I realized that it doesn't
actually say anything of value. It looks pretty but is devoid of
meaning (or, less glibly, it doesn't express any concept not already
covered by other text in the tutorial), so I'm cutting it entirely.
Some of the text pasted in earlier commits was certainly useful, but
needed a complete rework.
Also, the text pasted was far too terse, and more detail was needed.
Therefore, I've moved text around and build a more comprehensive
Background section. I've moved the burgeoning "Understanding Who's
Enforcing" section into the Background chapter and made it complete.
Probably the most bizarre (?) change I've made here is coining this
acronym COGEO. This is non-optimal for sure, and I've added a FIXME to
seek a better term.
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.
Software Freedom Law Center, a small law firm specializing in Open
Source, recently published its so-called "Guide to GPL Compliance,
Second Edition":
http://softwarefreedom.org/resources/2014/SFLC-Guide_to_GPL_Compliance_2d_ed.html
The Firm's document is substantially less comprehensive than this one;
however, their document contained a few phrases and paragraphs that
seemed useful and accurate. This commit incorporates the useful
material from that work into this one (as permitted by the CC BY-SA 4.0
license, which the Software Freedom Law Center applied to their work).
The useful sections have been pasted without proper textual integration
into the appropriate sections of this tutorial. A few are currently
commented out entirely and marked with appropriate FIXME's. Meanwhile,
the text that seems immediately useful is *not* commented out, and is
marked with "FIXME-URGENT". Additional work is now required to
integrate the new text properly into this tutorial.
Careful readers who compare this commit with The Firm's document will
find that I passed on inclusion of some seemingly useful material.
Unfortunately, The Firm's text contained some inaccuracies, and frames
discussion primarily from a for-profit perspective. More disturbingly,
a few statements even directly contradicted the FSF's stated policies.
Of course, The Firm clearly claims "this document does not express the
views, intentions, policy, or legal analysis of any SFLC clients or
client organizations", but I could not in good conscience adopt, as the
official advice in this tutorial, any text that conflicts with the FSF's
policies, nor will I incorporate any puffery that subtly kowtows to
for-profit corporate interests.
Nevertheless, given The Firm's perceived stature, I briefly considered
including policy-conflicting statements, attributing them as alternative
third-party opinions; many of the FSF's own opinions were already
incorporated in that manner earlier this year. Indeed, I will not prima
facie reject future patches that integrate such statements naturally for
this tutorial. However, I feel that the didactic value of including The
Firm's attributed dissenting opinions in this tutorial does not outweigh
my editing effort required for such additional textual integration.
Regarding Software Freedom Law Center's copyrights included herein,
I took the following specific actions to comply with CC By SA 4.0:
§3(a)(1)(a)(i): This log message indicates Software Freedom Law Center
as the source of the material herein committed.
§3(a)(1)(a)(i): Copyright notices at the top level of the document,
as well as those in individual parts, are updated to
include the 2014 copyright notice from the Software
Freedom Law Center.
§3(a)(1)(a)(ii-v): The project already referred to and included a copy
§3(b)(1): of CC BY SA 4.0 International and its URL.
§3(a)(2): The attribution information is fully included in
this Git repository.
§3(a)(3): I and this project have received no such request.
§3(b)(1): The license of the larger work was already
CC BY SA 4.0 International.
§3(b)(3): No such conditions are imposed.
Most redistributors, at least with regard to embedded systems, typically
include the kernel named Linux with their distribution. As such, even
when GPLv2-or-later and/or GPLv3-{only, or-later} works are included in
the aggregation, the termination implications are effectively those of
GPLv2-only, since it's unlikely in any event the violator will remove
the GPLv2-only work (particularly if it's Linux).
Joshua Gay made contributions to all the files earlier in 2014 (see git
log) which were copyrighted by the FSF, so FSF's copyright needs
refreshed to include this year.
Denver recently added a section to the enforcement-case-studies.tex, so
his copyright notice needs to go there and at the top file.
I made changes to enforcement-case-studies.tex on top of Denver's.
Also, remove commented-out copyright notices -- the ones in the actual
text are now primary and should be maintained directly.
The older portions of this tutorial tended to favor the term "derivative
work", since that was the popular catch-all term used at the time the
text was written.
However, as the newer text regarding GPLv3 now states, FSF abandoned the
use of the term "derivative work" in the text of GPLv3 itself, for
various reasons we already discuss in the tutorial.
Therefore, the tutorial text itself should likely not rely so heavily on
the phrase "derivative work" throughout. This change herein reworks a
number of places where "derivative work" was used in the tutorial and
replaced it with other terms.
Ultimately, some word-smithing happened as part of the process of doing
this patch.
