On 01/27/2013 02:50 AM, Richard Fontana wrote:
On 01/27/2013 01:52 AM, Joshua Gay wrote:
Let's say I lose my rights under ยง11 to the Covered Work. Could I ask a friend to give me a copy of the same Covered Work under the GNU GPL version 3 (via section 10) and then redistribute the covered work under the GNU GPL version 3?
This is a *very* interesting question. It raises a problem that arises much more generally in free software. It is what I call the "magic relicensing problem". The general approach has been to sweep this under the rug.
It also relates closely to a question @vanden was raising on identi.ca
- he asked whether the basic copyleft requirement in section 5
conflicted with section 10.
[...]
The solution I'm thinking of is that section 10 should be limited to 'Derived Works'. After all, why would one ever need to distribute copyleft-next under GPL/AGPL other than in what the FSF, certainly, would consider a 'Derived Work' scenario (using the terminology of copyleft-next -- a 'work based on the Program' or 'modified version' in GPLv3 parlance). Going further, maybe section 10 should be folded into section 5. You can Distribute a Derived Work under one of the following licenses: i) this License ii) a Later Version (unless We have explicitly said you can't) iii) GPLv2, AGPLv3, or later versions
If that were the case, then (let's say I'm the copyleft-next upstream licensor) your friend can't give you an unmodified version of the same work under GPLv3. He or she can give you a 'Derived Work' licensed under GPLv3. However, I don't think this means I am giving *you* a GPLv3 license as to what I wrote.
Pam Chestek raised a related issue in a github pull request: "Based on paragraph 6, the Received Work is licensed to the distributee under copyleft-next, so it's only the Derived Work that would be under an alternative license. And maybe not even really that; it might be just the delta between the Received Work and the Derived Work that would be under the new license. But I concede that my change, although I believe more accurate, might create confusion."
I am tracking the underlying issue here on github at https://github.com/richardfontana/copyleft-next/issues/30
- RF