On 01/27/2013 01:52 AM, Joshua Gay wrote:
Let's say I lose my rights under §11 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 "right answer" to your question has to be 'no'; the question is how to get there. One approach is to do nothing since (a) your hypothetical isn't realistic, after all, and (b) the solution I'm thinking of might destroy the nice, simple signal section 10 gives about GPL/AGPL compatibility and put us in GPLv3 (or Creative Commonsish) stylistic territory.
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.
(Think of similar facts, except my code is BSD-licensed -- and suppose violaton of the BSD license has results approximately as harsh as under copyleft-next and GPLv3.)
Maybe §11 could be explicit about what "new licenses" means, perhaps something along the lines of: "Termination of Your rights disqualifies You from receiving new licenses covering the Received Work (including any future version of this license or those listed in section 10 of this license)."
That's kind of like another way to get at the solution I'm suggesting.
This definitely goes into the Nonexistent Issue Tracker. I think whether to do something about this depends mainly on how ugly the result is.
- RF