[Linuxsampler-devel] LinuxSampler license actually forbids ALL use GPL design decisions)

[<lin...@sp...>]

When my brother asked me for help setting up LinuxSampler, I noticed 
that, because of a trick of legalese, the license actually forbids ALL use.

Basically, the problem is as follows:
1. The GPL allows use for any purpose so long as its restrictions are
    met.
2. The GPL explicitly forbids any additional restrictions.
3. As the party bestowing the GPL with its power, you're applying an
    additional restriction.

This means that, in plain English, you're saying "We grant permission to 
use LinuxSampler as long as you can simultaneously obey these two 
directives which directly contradict each other."

(It's the legal equivalent of "The next sentence is true. The previous 
sentence is false.")

This is actually by design. You're not SUPPOSED to be able to use the 
name "GPL" on anything that imposes additional restrictions.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NoMilitary

You'd be able to resolve this by removing the relevant portions of the 
GPL... but the GPL itself is licensed to you under terms similar to a 
CC-BY-ND license. You can copy it around but modified versions require 
permission from lic...@gn... and must have their name changed.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#ModifyGPL




Also, your interpretation of linking libgig with LinuxSampler doesn't 
agree with courts and lawyers who make the actual decisions, so the FAQ 
answer is at odds with legal reality:

It's legal for YOU to compile LinuxSampler against libgig since you own 
both of them, but it's illegal for ME to compile it because:
1. Regardless of the terms for LinuxSampler, you're offering libgig to
    me under a pure GPL license.
2. The GPL forbids linking against anything that can't also be
    distributed under pure GPL terms.

Again, this is by design. It's meant to prevent someone from taking a 
GPL library and incorporating it into something under different terms.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL

(Though the solution here is much simpler. Once you've fixed the 
LinuxSampler license, just say that people can have libgig under their 
choice of the GPL or the LinuxSampler license.)




Finally, while it's not strictly relevant to what I just said, I just 
wanted to point out that the "LinuxSampler is not open source, you are 
evil!" FAQ entry feels a little bit like attacking a straw man.

It's probably correct for anyone who makes an ad hominem attack like 
"you are evil!", but most of the people I've met who care about whether 
something is open source are referring to whether the license is OSI 
certified rather than the more colloquial definition.

...and the OSI will never certify a license with a non-commercial 
restriction because it violates criterion #6 (No Discrimination Against 
Fields of Endeavor) of their definition of open source.

http://opensource.org/docs/osd#fields-of-endeavor




Given how difficult it is to craft just the right legalese without 
paying a lawyer, I'll keep my eyes open for a freely-usable license 
that's sort of like the GPL with a non-commercial restriction, but I 
doubt I'll find one.

(The Creative Commons BY-NC and BY-NC-SA licenses were written by 
professionals and even they are considered rather toxic because of how 
some jurisdictions consider "a blog which makes a few cents off Google 
AdSense" as commercial enough to violate the license.)

Generally, if it's got the concept of source code (unlike Creative 
Commons licenses) and it doesn't meeet the OSI criteria, it's just filed 
under "proprietary" along with EULAs.

(The closest I've seen mention of is the old POV-Ray license and that 
had enough flaws that, in 2007, they were considering a full rewrite if 
their plans to re-licence the existing code to AGPL failed.)

-- 
Stephan Sokolow

Note: My e-mail address IS valid. It's a little trick I use to fool
"smarter" spambots and remind friends and family to use the custom
aliases I gave them.