Does GPLv2 Include an ‘Installation Information’ Obligation? A Textual & Historical Analysis

作者

  • McCoy Smith Lex Pan Law

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https://doi.org/10.14704/jolts.2021.12.1.149

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Law##common.commaListSeparator## information technology##common.commaListSeparator## Free and Open Source Software##common.commaListSeparator## GPLv2##common.commaListSeparator## GPLv3##common.commaListSeparator## ‘Installation Information’##common.commaListSeparator## Installation ‘Scripts’

摘要

One of the features included in version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GPLv3) was a requirement, in certain circumstances, to provide ‘Installation Information.’ To most, this was a new addition to the license to address a ‘loophole’ that existed in version 2 of the license (GPLv2); a loophole that was perceived as being exploited, at the time, by certain device vendors. Recently, it has been asserted that this requirement was inherent, or explicitly called for, in GPLv2. This paper examines the historical record around the time that the ‘Installation Information’ requirement was proposed, and eventually ratified, in GPLv3, to show that that requirement was understood to be both new, and not a part of GPLv2. A textual analysis of GPLv2 yields an identical result.

作者簡介

  • ##submission.authorWithAffiliation##

    McCoy Smith is the founding attorney of Lex Pan Law LLC, a full-service technology and intellectual property law firm in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.  Prior to founding Lex Pan Law in 2019, he handled all IP matters several large business groups of a Fortune 50 multinational technology company, and founded the Open Source Legal Practice Group there.  McCoy is the former co-chair for the Open Source Committee for the Intellectual Property Owner’s Association (IPO). From 2006-2007, he was an active participant in one of the discussion committees working on the drafting of the GNU General Public License (GPL), version 3, published in June, 2007.
    Prior to starting work in-house in 1999, McCoy was an attorney in private practice at a boutique patent law firm in New York, NY and Washington, DC, and specialized in IP litigation and patent prosecution.  He was also a patent examiner in the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office prior to law school, and taught patent bar review for Patent Resources Group from 1999-2008.

    McCoy is a graduate of University of Virginia (J.D., 1991), Johns Hopkins University (M.L.A., 1989) and Colorado State University (B.S.M.E., 1984), and is admitted to practice in New York, California, Oregon and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

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出版日期

2021-07-12

期號

卷 12 期 1 (2021)

分類

Articles

授權條款

The most restrictive licence we will accept for submission is Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 international (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) SPDX identifier CC-BY-4.0

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Does GPLv2 Include an ‘Installation Information’ Obligation? A Textual & Historical Analysis. (2021). Journal of Open Law, Technology & Society, 12(1), 21-32. https://doi.org/10.14704/jolts.2021.12.1.149