Re:French Court Issues Damages Award for Violation of GPL
by kelnos on Monday March 04, 2024 @04:25PM
(#39596335)
> Another, possibly far bigger problem, is that it's entirely possible to effectively neuter the GPL with a secondary contract.
I don't really think that's a problem, per se.
Regarding your second example, that's totally fair: effectively the theme maker (who is presumably also the sole copyright holder) did not actually give the theme to the other party licensed under the GPL: they licensed it differently in that sale, which is 100% their right to do.
The Red Hat example is a little more complex, I think. The GPL says you cannot add extra conditions to redistribution. If Red Hat owned the copyright for everything they distribute, that would be fine: they couldn't say RHEL was GPL-licensed, but they'd be in the clear.
I'm actually surprised they've gotten away with this: as far as "ambiguity in GPL enforcement" goes, I feel like it's not all that ambiguous that RH is committing a GPL violation by adding that condition. All it would take would be for rightsholders of a major component of RHEL (like perhaps the Linux kernel) to complain about this. (Then again, there may be no publicly-stated contract or policy here; RH may just cut off customers who share, and cite vague "we reserve the right to cut you off for any reason" policies.)
(Also I might be getting details wrong here; I'm just going by your description and haven't done my own research into these cases.)
I don't really think that's a problem, per se.
Regarding your second example, that's totally fair: effectively the theme maker (who is presumably also the sole copyright holder) did not actually give the theme to the other party licensed under the GPL: they licensed it differently in that sale, which is 100% their right to do.
The Red Hat example is a little more complex, I think. The GPL says you cannot add extra conditions to redistribution. If Red Hat owned the copyright for everything they distribute, that would be fine: they couldn't say RHEL was GPL-licensed, but they'd be in the clear.
I'm actually surprised they've gotten away with this: as far as "ambiguity in GPL enforcement" goes, I feel like it's not all that ambiguous that RH is committing a GPL violation by adding that condition. All it would take would be for rightsholders of a major component of RHEL (like perhaps the Linux kernel) to complain about this. (Then again, there may be no publicly-stated contract or policy here; RH may just cut off customers who share, and cite vague "we reserve the right to cut you off for any reason" policies.)
(Also I might be getting details wrong here; I'm just going by your description and haven't done my own research into these cases.)