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% GPL's Handling of Non-Copyright Systems % Bradley M. Kuhn % Tuesday 9 May 2017
Non-Copyright Systems
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Patents, NDAs, & other agreements often impact software.
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GPL is essentially a copyright license.
- so, how does GPL handle these systems?
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As always, GPL has conditional permissions.
- some such conditions relate to these other legal regimes.
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Compliance for these is much more legalistic than technical.
GPLv2§7
[GPLv2§]7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
GPLv3 Improvements
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GPLv3 expands GPLv2§7 into multiple sections.
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Creates detailed rules. - an improvement - legal compliance analysis is less complicated.
Staffing Question
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In complex environments, both lawyers & developers should analyze compliance obligations.
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Simple environments (i.e., no actual proprietary components in product), less expertise & cross-disciplinary staff time needed.
More Info / Talk License
- Specific Sections of Copyleft Guide relating to these topics: - GPLv2 §7: “Give Software Liberty or Give It Death!” - GPLv3 §10: Explicit Downstream License - GPLv3 §11: Explicit Patent Licensing - GPLv3 §12: Familiar as GPLv2 §7
Presentation and slides are: Copyright © Bradley M. Kuhn (2008–2011, 2015, 2017), Karen M. Sandler (2017), and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.