[PD] PiDiP's legal status

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Jan 18, 2006, at 3:52 AM, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

> On Tue, 17 Jan 2006, Hans-Christoph Steiner wrote:
>
>> Actually, it does work like that in this situation.  PiDiP started
>> with
>> GNU GPL'ed code, therefore must remain GPL'ed.  Yves could get
>> permission from the effectv for a different license, then change the
>> PiDiP license, but that would only affect future versions of PiDiP.
>
> I'm looking at clause 5 of the GPL right now and it's quite perplexing.
> I'm quite convinced that it's not permitted by law to take a package
> that
> is not legally distributable and assume that its licensing is something
> else just because it's the only way out for the software to stay
> distributable. I'm looking at clause 4 and it would seem that "any
> attempt
> to sublicense the program is void, and will automatically terminate
> your
> rights under this License", which is not the same as a license
> magically
> being applied to the derivative works without the consent of the author
> of the derivative works (who holds a copyright on the modifications
> made
> to the original works).
>
> Maybe it's time to ask for advice from the Free Software Foundation
> and/or
> other similar organisms?

Please bring it up to the FSF if that will settle your mind.  From my
research, I think the issue is settled: PiDiP must be available under  
the GNU
GPL because of PiDiP's dependecies on PDP and effectv.

.hc

________________________________________________________________________ 
____

Man has survived hitherto because he was too ignorant to know how to  
realize his wishes.
Now that he can realize them, he must either change them, or perish.
		                                                -William Carlos  
Williams