From 4e8398925b75b2cf22b31d6416222810501ddf9b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Richard Fontana Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2012 15:12:50 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] deleted definition of License; removed regeneration clause from definition of Corresponding Source This commit makes two small changes. First, the explicit definition of "License" is deleted as *probably* unnecessary. In GPLv2 the general understanding has been that "License" obviously means GPLv2. Now I recall that adding an explicit definition of "License" in GPLv3 (which I believe was my idea) did serve some purpose other than hyperlegalism. I believe it may have been thought desirable to clarify that in *any* version of the GNU GPL "this License" cannot mean "some or all versions of the GNU GPL" except in the special case of the "revised versions" provision. (As a concrete example, consider the meaning of GPLv2 section 2 for a "GPLv2 only" program: if "this License" could mean "any version of the GPL", it would frustrate the expectations of the licensors of the GPLv2-only program that modified versions be licensed only under GPLv2 and not GPLv3 or some other version.) Perhaps this should be revisited, but there is essentially no basis in real-world experience that justifies the specific fear that would motivate this clarification. Admittedly, the GNU GPL family is unusual as a copyleft license that does not have a built-in "or later" clause, and perhaps this feature or non-feature (clearly important to many GPL licensors of existing projects, such as the Linux kernel) justifies the clarification about what "this License" means. Nevertheless in five years of experience of GPLv2 no one has attempted to argue that because "License" is undefined in GPLv2 one can license out a modified version of a GPLv2-only program under GPLv3. (The counterargument to that may be that GPLv3 retroactively provides that clarification for GPLv2.) The second change in this commit is deletion of the following paragraph from the definition of Corresponding Source: The Corresponding Source need not include anything that users can regenerate automatically from other parts of the Corresponding Source. This must have been added for a reason, but I do not believe there is any record of it. I do not believe I was involved in discussing or drafting it (it seems likely that it was triggered by a stet comment). I'm sure there is some technical circumstance in which this sentence will provide some marginally desirable clarification of the limits of the Corresponding Source requirement but it is not obvious to me what such a circumstance would be. The definition of Corresponding Source is already complex enough. GPLv2 has gotten by without this clarification. In my post-2007 experience of GPLv3 I have never been aware of any issue triggering this clause. In the interest of brevity and simplification I have decided to delete it. If someone would like to explain what it is aimed at and why explicit inclusion of the clause is more helpful than hurtful (in making the Corresponding Source definition more complex) I'm all ears. --- GPL.next | 6 ------ 1 file changed, 6 deletions(-) diff --git a/GPL.next b/GPL.next index 039e6b4..5e9ff12 100644 --- a/GPL.next +++ b/GPL.next @@ -4,8 +4,6 @@ 0. Definitions. - "This License" refers to this document. - "The Program" refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is addressed as "you". @@ -74,10 +72,6 @@ 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. -- 2.11.4.GIT