On 10/12/2012 09:54 AM, Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
Note that the penalty for violating the liberty-or-death clause was
softer than violation.
You mean, in the sense that it makes clear that you only lose the
right of distribution?
As it stands, the way I read it now, it's
possible for a company to sign an NDA related to copyleft-next'd
software, which immediately causes a violation and if they don't cancel
that NDA in 30 days, then their rights terminate per §10.1.
How would an NDA trigger liberty-or-death? (I'm not saying it never
could, but I'm having trouble understanding your example because it's
not obvious how a garden-variety NDA would do so.)
So, in some sense, you've made the liberty-or-death clause more
strict.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think so. RMS has said that
he added liberty-or-death to GPLv2 to clarify what he felt was already
implicity in GPLv1. Indeed, GPLv2 says "This section is intended to
make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest
of this License."
Liberty-or-death seems to indicate that you can't distribute if that
act of distribution would involve you imposing further restrictions on
the GPL rights of your distributees. I believe the clarification RMS
was making was that the restriction you impose could be the result of
some external obligation placed on you.
OTOH, you've made it less strict, because you're clause seems
to indict
you need direct "Foo vs. 'Not Foo'" contradictions between third-party
agreements/judgments and copyleft-next. My feeling is the wording in
GPLv3 that says:
>> If you cannot convey a covered work so as to so as to satisfy
>> simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other
>> pertinent obligations, then as a consequence ...
it seems to me that is much more explicit.
To be convinced there is a problem here I would need to understand
your objection better.
- RF