Picking a license

[Ben Finney]

Patrick Maupin <pmaupin at gmail.com> writes:

> On May 6, 6:56 pm, Ben Finney <ben+pyt... at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> > Er, no. Anyone who thinks that a copyleft license “forces” anyone to
> > do anything is mistaken about copyright law
>
> Perhaps you feel "forces" is too loaded of a word. There is no
> question, however, that a copyright license can require that if you do
> "X" with some code, you must also do "Y".

No. A free software license doesn't require anything. It permits the
recipient to do things otherwise prohibited. Copyright law taketh, and
the license giveth as an exception to the law.

That is: it is copyright law that forces the recipient to abstain from a
broad range of actions. A free software license grants exceptions,
explicitly allowing specific actions to be performed.

> There is also no question that the GPL uses this capability in
> copyright law to require anybody who distributes a derivative work to
> provide the source. Thus, "forced to contribute back any changes" is
> definitely what happens once the decision is made to distribute said
> changes in object form.

You might as well say that a restaurant “forces” patrons to pay for
their meal. They don't; it's merely a proviso for performing the act of
eating the food.

Since no-one is forcing anyone to take any of the actions permitted in
the license, and since those actions would not otherwise be permitted
under copyright law, it's both false and misleading to refer to them as
“forced”.

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Ben Finney