On Tue, Jun 14, 2016 at 11:35:11AM -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
copyleft-next [0] [1] is an openly evolved copyleft license, its an
effort to evolve copyleft without participation of the Church (TM)
or State (R), completley openly to the extend development and
discussion of copyleft-next by participants of the copyleft-next
project are governed by the Harvey Birdman Rule [2].
Even though it has been a goal of the project to be GPL-v2 compatible
to be certain I've asked for a clarification about what makes
copyleft-next GPLv2 compatible and also asked for a summary of
benefits. This prompted some small minor changes to make compatiblity
even further clear and as of copyleft 0.3.1 compatibility should
be crystal clear [3].
The summary of why copyleft-next 0.3.1 is compatible with GPLv2
is explained as follows:
Like GPLv2, copyleft-next requires distribution of derivative works
("Derived Works" in copyleft-next 0.3.x) to be under the same license.
Ordinarily this would make the two licenses incompatible. However,
copyleft-next 0.3.1 says: "If the Derived Work includes material
licensed under the GPL, You may instead license the Derived Work under
the GPL." "GPL" is defined to include GPLv2.
In practice this means copyleft-next code in Linux may be licensed
under the GPL2, however there are additional obvious gains for
bringing contributins from Linux outbound where copyleft-next is
preferred. To help review further I've also independently reviewed
compatiblity with attorneys at SUSE and they agree with the
compatibility.
A summary of benefits of copyleft-next >= 0.3.1 over GPLv2 is listed
below, it shows *why* some folks like myself will prefer it over
GPLv2 for future work.
o It is much shorter and simpler
o It has an explicit patent license grant, unlike GPLv2
o Its notice preservation conditions are clearer
o More free software/open source licenses are compatible
with it (via section 4)
o The source code requirement triggered by binary distribution
is much simpler in a procedural sense
o Recipients potentially have a contract claim against distributors
who are noncompliant with the source code requirement
o There is a built-in inbound=outbound policy for upstream
contributions (cf. Apache License 2.0 section 5)
o There are disincentives to engage in the controversial practice
of copyleft/ proprietary dual-licensing
o In 15 years copyleft expires, which can be advantageous
for legacy code
o There are explicit disincentives to bringing patent infringement
claims accusing the licensed work of infringement (see 10b)
o There is a cure period for licensees who are not compliant
with the license (there is no cure opportunity in GPLv2)
o copyleft-next has a 'built-in or-later' provision
[0]
https://github.com/copyleft-next/copyleft-next
[1]
https://lists.fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/copyleft-next/
[2]
https://github.com/richardfontana/hbr/blob/master/HBR.md
[3]
https://lists.fedorahosted.org/archives/list/copyleft-next@lists.fedoraho...
Cc: copyleft-next(a)lists.fedorahosted.org
Cc: Richard Fontana <fontana(a)sharpeleven.org>
Signed-off-by: Ciaran Farrell <Ciaran.Farrell(a)suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Christopher De Nicolo <Christopher.DeNicolo(a)suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof(a)kernel.org>
---
I've tested its use at run time as well obviously.
include/linux/license.h | 1 +
include/linux/module.h | 1 +
2 files changed, 2 insertions(+)
Greg, Rusty,
I haven't seen any objections or questions, so just a friendly *poke*.
Luis