Subject: Re: help! absolute beginner
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1998/12/19
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3123014884919222@naggum.no>

* Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr>
| The GPL is supposed to change the society -- its creator hasn't kept that
| a secret.  Is that why you call the FSF and their followers a "protest
| movement"?

  hey, I'm all for changing society, but there's fighting _for_ something
  and there's fighting _against_ something.  it's a hell of a lot easier to
  get people to agree on what they don't want and fight against it, and
  maybe you succeed in defeating it, but then what do you do?  that's a
  protest movement.  in contrast, if you fight _for_ something, you never
  really have that question.

  (the worst you can do to anyone is to fulfill all their dreams.)

| It is my understanding that the owner of the code can always relicense
| their code under a different license, thus making it eligible for the
| recipient's purposes.

  I'm concerned with what this would mean.  if there is a public license
  and a private license for the same code, the two can never really be
  merged, so there would have to be a very firm split at the time when the
  two different licenses were created, perhaps to be glued together by the
  owner of the source.  considering the fact that one of these are in the
  open, that must mean the other is precluded from any form of publication,
  and is also barred from adopting changes to the same source made under
  the GPL.  this is very different from what the case would be if the
  GPL'ed version did not exist.

  in the usual understanding of "relicense", such dependence is not an
  issue, since neither licenses grant anything to the entire public, but
  lets the owner retain control over it, and would presumably preclude
  conflicts of interests and conflicting licenses for the same people.

  it is, therefore, my understanding that once GPL'ed, it has to be
  retracted and only later developments may be relicensed.  I'm not sure
  how this would be done in practice and ensured to be fully available as a
  legal option.  I'd like to hear about people who have done this before I
  would speculate on how it would actually be done.

#:Erik
-- 
  Attention, Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee!  We have
  intercepted a coded transmission from Bill Clinton to Saddam Hussein that
  puts your life in jeopardy.  Clinton is prepared to cease fire if all of
  you are killed by Iraqi terrorists, whom he won't prosecute.  Be warned!