Patrik Stridvall wrote:
But the point I'm trying to make is that I can be in violation of your RELICENSE. I can make a claim that YOUR work is covered by the *GPL, so that your RElicense to me doesn't apply. If this holds, then my original statement that you gave up your copyright protection holds.
I'm not sure I follow you.
Yes, if my work is covered by *GPL, you can ALWAYS use it if you follow the conditions in the license.
yes, even if it contradicts your relicense. If you "work on" an *GPLed product, what you do is automatically claimed by *GPL, thus you can't make any license on your work that is *GPL free.
The *GPL only claim parts that are considered a derived work of the *GPL work.
So if I write a function A and use that to improve the implementation of a *GPL:Ed function B, the *GPL claims my function A under the *GPL because of the existance of code in B calling my function A and thus the work I distribute as a whole includes my function A as a derived work.
However my function A in and of itself is not a derived work of the *GPL:ed work so the *GPL only claims the function A as a part of what I did above.
This means that I can relicense the implementation of function A under another license and the *GPL can't claim any indepedent modifications to it since it is not by itself a derived work of the *GPL:ed work.
Of course, if you later decide that oh well following the *GPL is not that bad in comparison after all, it is possible and even probably that I can't sue you for breaking the relicense as long as you follow the *GPL.
and if your are relying on your copyright protection to allow you to benefit on the relicense, you don't have it in this case. Remember also that the *GPL is pretty much irrelevent so long as you are not distributing to the public, so it's not a great cost to choose to go that route.
If you are not distributing to the public you don't need a relicense, the *GPL only forces you to release your work if you distribute to the public.
The point it that you must show that you follow either *GPL or my relicense in order to not be a copyright infringer. You don't have to follow both though.
It's a little different, because I think the burden of proof is different. Pending on the what you have in your relicense, it's easy to show that the receiver is covered because they have the software. On a GPL violation, you have to show that what they are doing with the software is in violation of the license - which might be much harder to show.
I think we are coming to much of topic by discussing the burden of proof.
The point is that if you distribute without the permission of the *GPL or my relicense you are a copyright infringer. Whether in pratice I can detect it or prove it, is irrellevant as far as choosing a license for Wine is concerned.