in reply to OT: A Modest Proposal for a GNU infrastructure license RGPL

Just write a GPLed program whose output necessarily includes text that is under your copyright. That makes the output necessarily GPLed because it includes (and derives from) a GPLed source.

It does not force the input to be GPLed, but you cannot do that within the confines of existing copyright.

Side-benefit. You do not have to introduce Yet Another License.

  • Comment on Re: OT: A Modest Proposal for a GNU infrastructure license RGPL

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Re: Re: OT: A Modest Proposal for a GNU infrastructure license RGPL
by mdupont (Scribe) on Jun 20, 2002 at 12:17 UTC
    There is nothing stopping anyone from removing that under the gpl. :(

    Anyone can just take out the GPLed code. mike

[reply]
      It depends on what the nature of your program is.

      If, among other things, your programmer inserts extensive pre-processor macros, then changing that behaviour may be impossible. Also note that if person A creates a document, B modifies it, then C makes modifications that (among other things) remove everything that B did - B still has copyright on the final result! (Copyright is a funny beast.)

      Also note that if you try to implement a ton of restrictions beyond the simple approach that I just described, you will run afoul of the fact that your license is not even remotely compatible with the GPL. This is a Bad Idea.

      For further discussion I suggest signing up for fsl-discuss. They are much better equipped to give you feedback than random Perl hackers.

[reply]
        Thanks for the tip (fsl-discuss).

        Note that the problem that the user can change to program under the gpl to remove the output of the copyright notice from the data outputted.

        That does not make the future output copyrighted?

        mike

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