Google Changes WebM License, Now Pure BSD
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 4th Jun 2010 22:36 UTC
Google When Google first unveiled its WebM project, there were quite some concerns over its license. This license was incompatible with version 2 and 3 of the GPL, and was effectively a new license, causing unnecessary confusion. Google has now cleared everything up by switching to a regular BSD license.
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RE[12]: GPL
by lemur2 on Mon 7th Jun 2010 03:49 UTC in reply to "RE[11]: GPL"
lemur2
Member since:
2007-02-17

"They agree that the original work must constitue a significant part of the new derived work. If the original work doesn't constitue a significant part of the new work, then the new work is not "based on" the original at all, and is therefore not a derivative work.
I don't care what the definition says. But I suggest you, a GPL specialist, to send an e-mail to Richard Stallman. He probably doesn't know this.
This is basic copyright law. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what someone like Stallman may or may not think.
We were talking about GPL, and GPL works this way. Period. Get yourself informed. "

Pfft. Utter rubbish.

Here is the way it "works". This was the outcome of the first actual case in the US involving the GPL.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3761924232.html
The first U.S. GPL-related lawsuit appears to be headed for a quick out-of-court settlement. Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it had violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license.


It is all about a company making a slightly modified version of an entire open source program (in this case, BusyBox) and releasing that as closed source within its own product. That is a real-life, honest-to-goodness, actual-court-case GPL violation.

Copying just one line of GPL code into a million lines of your own code just isn't. The law doesn't say that at all (I even quoted the actual text of the law to you). If you tried to take such a case to court as an alleged violation of the GPL license, the court would simply say to you "go away you silly little boy".

Perhaps just that is what I too should say to you.

Edited 2010-06-07 03:52 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[13]: GPL
by dbolgheroni on Mon 7th Jun 2010 03:57 in reply to "RE[12]: GPL"
dbolgheroni Member since:
2007-01-18

Here is the way it "works". This was the outcome of the first actual case in the US involving the GPL.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3761924232.html

The first U.S. GPL-related lawsuit appears to be headed for a quick out-of-court settlement. Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it had violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license.


Thank you. Just proves what I already said.

Reply Parent Score: 1

RE[14]: GPL
by lemur2 on Mon 7th Jun 2010 06:03 in reply to "RE[13]: GPL"
lemur2 Member since:
2007-02-17

"Here is the way it "works". This was the outcome of the first actual case in the US involving the GPL. http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3761924232.html The first U.S. GPL-related lawsuit appears to be headed for a quick out-of-court settlement. Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it had violated the GPLv2 (GNU General Public License version 2), and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license.
Thank you. Just proves what I already said. "

How so? Are you slow, or what?

In this case, one of the very few ever taken to court, the company called Monsoon Multimedia had copied all of the code from the GPL BusyBox program, modified it very slightly (just a few lines), and re-sold it as closed source. The product that they sold had an almost-unmodified version of GPL BusyBox within it. Monsoon Multimedia did not write the vast majority of that program, the original BusyBox authors did. BusyBox GPL code constituded a major part of a program (a derived work) that was included in the Monsoon Multimedia product.

That is nothing like what you said. You claim was that "just one line" of GPL code would require "a million lines" of your code to become GPL. The wrong way around entirely. This case involved more like "a million lines of BusyBox GPL code" plus "just one new line written by Monsoon Multimedia".

Monsoon Multimedia quickly decided that it was far easier for them to release their one additional line of source code as GPL code also, rather than re-write the million lines of BusyBox that wasn't their code to sell in the first place. After all, the million lines of BusyBox code, that Monsoon Multimedia didn't write, were already open source anyway. It isn't like Monsoon Multimedia had to give away any of their own real work. All that was required of them was to release as open source (GPL) the very few lines of BusyBox that they had modified. That's it.

Where is the downside for Monsoon Multimedia in simply complying with the GPL license of BusyBox code?

PS: Any other bits of the Monsoon Multimedia product are not affected by this case. It involved only the GPL BusyBox code as it was used within their product, the vast majority of which Monsoon Multimedia did not write in the first place.

Edited 2010-06-07 06:15 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 3