[wp-hackers] Licensing and Copyright Issues with the Hello Dolly Plugin

hakre hanskrentel at yahoo.de
Thu Dec 16 02:31:23 UTC 2010


> Von: Ryan Bilesky <rbilesky at gmail.com>

> An: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
> Gesendet: Donnerstag, den 16. Dezember 2010, 2:02:54 Uhr
> Betreff: Re: [wp-hackers] Licensing and Copyright Issues with the Hello Dolly 
>Plugin
> 
> [...]
> 
> 
> My statement that it was  non-commercial use isn't implying that someone is
> restricted from doing so,  but what I was getting at is Matt didn't develop
> the plugin as a commercial  product, it is included in wordpress a free
> product, not a commercial  product, and the point that the end use generates
> no commercial value for the  user is also a good point to this.

My statement shouldn't suggest that there is no such thing as "fair-use" for 
individual users of Hello Dolly and other lyrics. Rights under fair use remain.

But fair use does never cover relicensing under the terms of the GPL. You need 
the consent of the original copyright holder for that.

But you argue pro fair use because you know that you can gain rights without 
the copyright holders consent. Sure, this would be very neat, if claiming 
fair use would just solve the issue, but as written you get only limited rights 
by fair-use, nothing such exclusively like relicensing.

"Fair use is very limited and does not include creation of derivative works."
http://www.mail-archive.com/license-discuss@opensource.org/msg01375.html

At least this is how I understand it as well. So debating about fair-use while 
you talk about code that is creating derivates that get re-distributed under GPL
is misleading then.

See as well:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLFairUse

which explains that fair-use still applies to GPLed works.

-- hakre

http://hakre.wordpress.com/





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