Re: When will Betov come clean on GPL ?
- From: Donkey <contact_nospam_donkey@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2005 23:54:32 GMT
randyhyde@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
There is no question of contradiction in the license, the RPL is completely invalid from the view of contract law. Rene has stated that many people have contributed to RosAsm, those people contributed their copyrighted code (copyright is always defaulted to the actual author) and did so under the assumption that the code was for a GPL project. Since all of the code in RosAsm was not written by Betov himself he has no legal authority to modify or abridge the original copyright without written permission of every contributor, even those who no longer happen to use RosAsm and I doubt he ever got that from Jimmy Cliff or the others he offended along the way. His only option is to remove all code not written by himself (along with anyone else who wishes to participate) and release that portion under a different license.
hutch-- wrote:
Alex,
Its the beginning of a new bullsh*t filter, Betov stops claiming his work is GPL or Betov gets his ear burnt. The burner will last longer than Betov's ear. :)
Here is the notice that appears at the beginning of the RosAsm source file:
Copyright (C) 1998, René Tournois
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License included in B_U_Asm.exe for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
In B_U_ASM he lists version 2 of the GPL.
He also lists the RosAsm license, but the RosAsm source code itself claims it is covered under GPL, not RPL. Rene et. al. would have a hard time getting the RPL to stick in a court of law as the source code makes no mention of the RPL. Because the GPL and RPL are incompatible, I'm sure anyone could legally choose whichever license they're happiest with and go with that. So in that sense, RosAsm *is* GPL.
The RPL seems to be a (poorly-written) document that attempts to do a CYA on the disassembler. IOW, "don't hold us responsible if someone breaks the law using our disassembler."
Of course, no one in their right mind is going to adhere to the RPL. It's unlikely that anyone outside the core RosAsm development team would actually do anything with the RosAsm source code, but the RPL goes much farther than this -- it places restrictions on your own code you develop with RosAsm. Quoting the RPL:
5 - The Licensee is free to use RosAsm to build his/her own and independent programs, which means building a 'work based on the Program', he agrees to create them respecting all terms of this License whether the program is focused to improve the Open Source and Free Software movement, whether it is focused to Commercial applications, inserting a small reference that his/her application was built using RosAsm followed by RosAsm's notice of copyright.
IOW, the author of a program written with RosAsm is *forced* to add a message to the program acknowledging the use of RosAsm and appending the RosAsm copyright notice. Given that Rene does *not* hold any copyright on the program created by the RosAsm user, this requirement is absurd. Who knows? Maybe I'm interpreting this wrong. For a legal document it contains a *large* number of English errors, making it completely undefensible in a court of law, but the intent in the above paragraph, for example, seems to be to force RosAsm users to promote RosAsm in their own private applications. And Rene has the nerve to claim that others are "self-promoting". :-)
Interestingly enough, the license goes on to say:
7 - This License only covers the activities focused on the building of 'derivative version', 'derivative works', translations, building documents and others related to the improvement of RosAsm, as specified above in Sections 2, 3 and 4. Activities described in Sections 5 and 6 are not covered by this License, because they are outside its scope and therefore, needs to have their own and independent License that best fits their usage.
How can point (5) suggest that they must attach a RosAsm copyright notice and then section (7) says that this license doesn't cover (5)? Are sections (5) and (6) a separate license? The language makes no sense.
Now consider:
13 - You may not copy, analyze, use, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
This is in contradiction to the source code which claims a GPL license. This would also imply that RPL supercedes the GPL. Again, the confusion in the licensing pretty much makes the RPL null and void (indeed, one would think that it makes the entire license on RosAsm null and void).
Moving forward:
14 - You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work derived on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
The "nothing else" clause is particularly troublesome. Does not the RosAsm team allow the GPL to be applied instead (at the user's desire)? Again, contradictory.
Of course, there is the infamous "section 20" that is highly discriminatory and definitely non-GPL.
Then again, the whole concern about the RPL being non-GPL and non-free, despite Rene's machinations to the contrary, really aren't much of an issue. Outside of the small core of RosAsm developers, no one is going to use source code from RosAsm in their own projects and, for that matter, almost no one develops software using RosAsm, so whatever license Rene wants to attach to it, and the legal and ethical consequences of such a license are irrelevant. Such licenses would only have meaning if people actually *used* the product.
It would be interesting to see Rene provide actual clarification concerning the license. Do you have a choice of RPL or GPL? Does one license apply and not the other? What's the deal? AFAIKT, the GPL applies because that's the copyright notice that appears at the beginning of the source file. RPL's presence in B_U_ASM appears to be an enigma because the source code doesn't claim that the RPL applies.
Clearly the two licenses are incompatible. So Rene needs to choose one (or say the user can choose one) and update the copyright notices accordingly. Cheers, Randy Hyde
Donkey .
- References:
- When will Betov come clean on GPL ?
- From: hutch--
- Re: When will Betov come clean on GPL ?
- From: Alex
- Re: When will Betov come clean on GPL ?
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- Re: When will Betov come clean on GPL ?
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