Open source, closed source, and the value of code

[Monte Goulding]

Robert you may like to take the following snipped quote from Mark Waddingham into consideration in your analysis of how GPL applies to stackFiles:

I am not a lawyer, but it seems wise to at least provide some guidance in this case. Ultimately, it can only be guidance as we did not write the GPL and we do not define copyright law. We can just use our best judgement, our experience, our understanding of the GPL, and look to other use-cases of the GPL which are in existence in the same sphere as us.
It is our considered opinion and after much discussion over quite a long time that the following statement is definitely true:
If Wordpress and Drupal based on current advice from the FSF (who can be considered legal experts in this field - if somewhat biased) believe that their 'plugins' are derivative works of their systems then under the same considerations 'stackfiles' are derivative works of LiveCode.
Now, we firmly believe that the FSF are correct. Not only do we think it is a reasonable interpretation of derivative work, but it is indeed part of the very spirit of the GPL itself. Therefore:
If you use LiveCode Community to create or modify a stackfile to which you hold copyright and then choose to distribute it, then you must distribute it under the terms of the GPLv3. You cannot choose to license it under any other license whether it be more or less permissive than the GPLv3 (on whatever axis you wish to take).

My reading of this is that any content embedded in a stackFile should be licensed under the GPL. I could be wrong as I’m also not a lawyer! I would have thought that the spirit of the license that it applies to everything the application requires to function.

To be honest I’m unclear if there are grey areas about loading content at runtime from external files. It may be only OK to license differently under certain conditions like publicly documented file format reader/editors???? I don’t know about that but it would have seemed to be an easy workaround for Wordpress themes if it were possible to license the php part GPL and the images and CSS etc under some proprietary license. Like I said though, I’m not a lawyer!

Cheers

Monte
> On 1 Mar 2016, at 3:29 PM, Robert Mann <rman at free.fr> wrote:
> 
> -- YES : with the Open Source Stack, you can sell staks AND forbid anyother
> third party to re-sell that stack if it includes content you wish to keep an
> eye upon. The GPL license only applies to CODE, not to the STACK as a whole.