guide/presentations/30min-specific-sections/specific-sections.md

% Considering Key Sections of the GPL % Bradley M. Kuhn % Tuesday 9 May 2017

Conditional Permissions

• A copyleft license grants copyright permissions, conditionally.

• Think of the phrase: “provided that”

• “provided that”: appears (in some form) only

• 4 times in GPLv2

• 9 times in GPLv3.

Considering Sections of the GPL

• GPL ♥ 17 USC§106(2) & 17 USC§106(3)

• GPL hinges on modification and distribution.

Why Permission to Modify?

• Your new copyrights are your copyrights:

  • you are affixing it in a tangible medium.

• Exclusive right of copyright holders:

  • Control on “preparation of derivative works”
  • Distribution of the work.
  • Note the combination of these.

• Again, see 17 USC§106

• N.B.: “derivative works” is USA-centric, modify is more international)

Modification As a Center Provision

• GPL's primary copyright hook is copyright controls on the right to modify.

• GPL's central tenant:

• You can make a modified version of various types privately as much as you'd like.

• When you distribute that modified version, you have requirements to meet.

• Technological considerations dictate necessity of more complex rules for certain types of modifications.

GPLv2 § 2(a-b)

[GPLv2§]2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

b) 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.

GPLv3§5(a-c)

You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) The work must carry prominent notices stating that you modified it, and giving a relevant date.

b) The work must carry prominent notices stating that it is released under this License and any conditions added under section 7. This requirement modifies the requirement in section 4 to "keep intact all notices".

c) You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy. This License will therefore apply, along with any applicable section 7 additional terms, to the whole of the work, and all its parts, regardless of how they are packaged. This License gives no permission to license the work in any other way, but it does not invalidate such permission if you have separately received it.

GPLv2§2¶ penultimates

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program.

GPLv3 §0 ¶1-5

"Copyright" also means copyright-like laws that apply to other kinds of works, such as semiconductor masks.

"The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is addressed as "you". "Licensees" and "recipients" may be individuals or organizations.

To "modify" a work means to copy from or adapt all or part of the work in a fashion requiring copyright permission, other than the making of an exact copy. The resulting work is called a "modified version" of the earlier work or a work "based on" the earlier work.

A "covered work" means either the unmodified Program or a work based on the Program.

Binaries (Object Code) are Modifications

• Software that the computer understands is different than software humans read.

• There is often a process required to modify (and/or translate) the software from human-readable + This process can be done ahead of time.

• Separation of source and binary was the first way proprietary software companies discovered to subjugate users. + GPL uses the fact that binaries are modifications (which are often distribution) to prevent that subjugation.

GPLv2 § 3(a-b)

[GPLv2§]3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange;

GPLv3 § 6(a-b)

[GPLv3 § ] 6. Conveying Non-Source Forms.

You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways:

a) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by the Corresponding Source fixed on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange.

b) Convey the object code in, or embodied in, a physical product (including a physical distribution medium), accompanied by a written offer, valid for at least three years and valid for as long as you offer spare parts or customer support for that product model, to give anyone who possesses the object code either (1) a copy of the Corresponding Source for all the software in the product that is covered by this License, on a durable physical medium customarily used for software interchange, for a price no more than your reasonable cost of physically performing this conveying of source, or (2) access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.

GPLv3 § 1 ¶ 1, 4-6

The "source code" for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. "Object code" means any non-source form of a work.

The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities. However, it does not include the work's System Libraries, or general-purpose tools or generally available free programs which are used unmodified in performing those activities but which are not part of the work. For example, Corresponding Source includes interface definition files associated with source files for the work, and the source code for shared libraries and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is specifically designed to require, such as by intimate data communication or control flow between those subprograms and other parts of the work.

The Corresponding Source need not include anything that users can regenerate automatically from other parts of the Corresponding Source.

The Corresponding Source for a work in source code form is that same work.