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Bradley Kuhn (bkuhn) - 10 years ago 2014-03-21 16:53:48
bkuhn@ebb.org
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@@ -3016,524 +3016,529 @@ Thus, the three sentences in the center of GPLv3's User Product definition
 
encapsulate the judicial and administrative principles established over the
 
past three decades in the USA concerning the Magnuson-Moss consumer product
 
definition.  First, it states that doubtful cases are resolved in favor of
 
coverage under the definition.  Second, it indicate that the words ``normally
 
used'' in the consumer product definition refer to a typical or common use of
 
a class of product, and not the status of a particular user or expected or
 
actual uses by a particular user.  Third, it clearly states that the
 
existence of substantial non-consumer uses of a product does not negate a
 
determination that it is a consumer product, unless such non-consumer uses
 
represent the only significant mode of use of that product.
 

	
 
It should be clear from these added sentences that it is the general mode of
 
use of a product that determines objectively whether or not it is a consumer
 
product.  One could not escape the effects of the User Products provisions by
 
labeling what is demonstrably a consumer product in ways that suggest it is
 
``for professionals'', for example.
 

	
 

	
 
\subsubsection{Installation Information}
 

	
 
With the User Products definition complete,  The ``Installation Information''
 
definition uses that to define what those receiving object code inside a User
 
Product must receive.
 

	
 
Installation Information is information that is ``required to install and
 
execute modified versions of a covered work \dots from a modified version of
 
its'' CCS, in the same User Product for which the covered work is conveyed.
 
GPLv3 provides guidance concerning how much information must be provided: it
 
``must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified
 
object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because
 
modification has been made.''  For example, the information provided would be
 
insufficient if it enabled a modified version to run only in a disabled
 
fashion, solely because of the fact of modification (regardless of the actual
 
nature of the modification).  The information need not consist of
 
cryptographic keys; Installation Information may be ``any methods,
 
procedures, authorization keys, or other information''.
 

	
 
Note that GPLv3 does not define ``continued functioning'' further.  However,
 
GPLv3 does provide some additional guidance concerning the scope of
 
GPLv3-compliant action or inaction that distributors of
 
technically-restricted User Products can take with respect to a downstream
 
recipient who replaces the conveyed object code with a modified version.
 
First of all, GPLv3 makes clear that GPLv3 implies no obligation ``to
 
continue to provide support service, warranty, or updates'' for such a work.
 

	
 
Second, most technically-restricted User Products are designed to communicate
 
across networks.  It is important for both users and network providers to
 
know when denial of network access to devices running modified versions
 
becomes a GPL violation.  GPLv3 permits denial of access in two cases: ``when
 
the modification itself materially and adversely affects the operation of the
 
network,'' and when the modification itself ``violates the rules and
 
protocols for communication across the network''.  The second case is
 
deliberately drawn in general terms, and it serves as a foundation for
 
reasonable enforcement policies that respect recipients' right to modify
 
while recognizing the legitimate interests of network providers.
 

	
 
Note that GPLv3 permits the practice of conveying object code in a mode not
 
practically susceptible to modification by any party, such as code burned in
 
ROM or embedded in silicon.  The goal of the Installation Information
 
requirement is to ensure the downstream licensee receives the real right to
 
modify when the device manufacturer or some other party retains that right.
 
Accordingly, GPLv3\S6's ante-penultimate paragraph states that the
 
requirement to provide Installation Information ``does not apply if neither
 
you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code
 
on the User Product''.
 

	
 
Finally, GPLv3\S6 makes it clear that there is also no requirement to
 
provide warranty or support for the User Product itself.
 

	
 
\subsection{GPLv3~\S7: Additional Permissions}
 

	
 
The GPL is a statement of permissions, some of which have conditions.
 
Additional terms --- terms that supplement those of the GPL --- may come to be
 
placed on, or removed from, GPL-covered code in certain common ways.
 
Copyleft licensing theorists have generally called
 
 those added terms ``additional permissions'' if they grant
 
exceptions from the conditions of the GPL, and ``additional requirements'' if
 
they add conditions to the basic permissions of the GPL\@. The treatment of
 
additional permissions and additional requirements under GPLv3 is necessarily
 
asymmetrical, because they do not raise the same interpretive
 
issues; in particular, additional requirements, if allowed without careful
 
limitation, could transform a GPL'd program into a non-free one.
 

	
 
With these principles in the background, GPLv3~\S7  answers the following
 
questions: 
 
\begin{enumerate}
 
\item How do the presence of additional terms on all or part of a GPL'd program
 
affect users' rights?
 

	
 
\item When and how may a licensee add terms to code being
 
distributed under the GPL? 
 

	
 
\item When may a licensee remove additional terms?
 
\end{enumerate}
 

	
 
Additional permissions present the easier case.  Since the mid-1990s,
 
permissive exceptions often appeared alongside GPLv2 with permissive
 
exceptions to allow combination
 
with certain non-free code.  Typically, downstream
 
stream recipients could remove those exceptions and operate under pure GPLv2.
 
Similarly, LGPLv2.1 is in essence a permissive variant of GPLv2,
 
and it permits relicensing under the GPL\@.  
 

	
 
\sectin
 
These practices are now generalized via GPLv3~\S7.
 
A licensee may remove any additional permission from
 
a covered work, whether it was placed by the original author or by an
 
upstream distributor.  A licensee may also add any kind of additional
 
permission to any part of a work for which the licensee has, or can give,
 
appropriate copyright permission. For example, if the licensee has written
 
that part, the licensee is the copyright holder for that part and can
 
therefore give additional permissions that are applicable to it.
 
Alternatively, the part may have been written by someone else and licensed,
 
with the additional permissions, to that licensee.  Any additional
 
permissions on that part are, in turn, removable by downstream recipients.
 
As GPLv3~\S7\P1 explains, the effect of an additional permission depends on
 
whether the permission applies to the whole work or a part.
 

	
 
% FIXME-LATER: LGPLv3 will have its own section
 

	
 
Indeed, LGPLv3 is itself simply  a list of additional permissions supplementing the
 
terms of GPLv3.  GPLv3\S7 has thus provided the basis for recasting a
 
formally complex license as an elegant set of added terms, without changing
 
any of the fundamental features of the existing LGPL\@.  LGPLv3 is thus  a model for developers wishing to license their works under the
 
GPL with permissive exceptions.  The removability of additional permissions
 
under GPLv3\S7 does not alter any existing behavior of the LGPL since the LGPL
 
has always allowed relicensing under the ordinary GPL\@.
 

	
 
\section{GPLv3~\S7: Understanding License Compatibility}
 
\label{license-compatibility}
 

	
 
A challenge that faced the Free Software community heavily through out the
 
early 2000s was the proliferation of incompatible Free Software licenses.  Of
 
course, the GPL cannot possibly be compatible with all such licenses.
 
However, GPLv3
 
contains provisions that are designed to reduce license incompatibility by
 
making it easier for developers to combine code carrying non-GPL terms with
 
GPL'd code.
 

	
 
This license compatibility issue arises for
 
three reasons.  First, the GPL is a strong copyleft license, requiring
 
modified versions to be distributed under the GPL\@.  Second, the GPL states
 
that no further restrictions may be placed on the rights of recipients.
 
Third, all other software freedom respecting licenses in common use contain certain
 
requirements, many of which are not conditions made by the GPL\@.  Thus, when
 
GPL'd code is modified by combination with code covered by another formal
 
license that specifies other requirements, and that modified code is then
 
distributed to others, the freedom of recipients may be burdened by
 
additional requirements in violation of the GPL.  It can be seen that
 
additional permissions in other licenses do not raise any problems of license
 
compatibility.
 

	
 
GPLv3  took a new approach to the issue of combining GPL'd code with
 
code governed by the terms of other software freedom licenses.  Traditional
 
GPLv2 license compatibility theory (which was not explicitly stated in GPLv2
 
itself, but treated as a license interpretation matter by the FSF) held that GPLv2 allowed such
 
combinations only if the non-GPL licensing terms permitted distribution under
 
the GPL and imposed no restrictions on the code that were not also imposed by
 
the GPL\@.  In practice, the FSF historically supplemented that policy with a structure of
 
exceptions for certain kinds of combinations.
 

	
 
GPLv3~\S7  implements a more explicit policy on license
 
compatibility.  It formalizes the circumstances under which a licensee may
 
release a covered work that includes an added part carrying non-GPL terms. 
 
GPLv3~\S7 distinguish between terms that provide additional permissions, and terms that
 
place additional requirements on the code, relative to the permissions and
 
requirements established by applying the GPL to the code.
 

	
 
As discussed in the previous section of this tutorial, GPLv3~\S7 first and foremost explicitly allows added parts covered by terms with
 
additional permissions to be combined with GPL'd code. This codifies the
 
existing practice of regarding such licensing terms as compatible with the
 
GPL\@. A downstream user of a combined GPL'd work who modifies such an added
 
part may remove the additional permissions, in which case the broader
 
permissions no longer apply to the modified version, and only the terms of
 
the GPL apply to it.
 

	
 
In its treatment of terms that impose additional requirements, GPLv3\S7
 
extends the range of licensing terms with which the GPL is compatible.  An
 
added part carrying additional requirements may be combined with GPL'd code,
 
but only if those requirements belong to an set enumerated in GPLv3\S7. There
 
are, of course,  limits on the acceptable additional requirements, which to
 
ensures that enhanced license compatibility does not
 
defeat the broader software-freedom-defending terms of the GPL\@. Unlike terms that grant
 
additional permissions, terms that impose additional requirements cannot be
 
removed by a downstream user of the combined GPL'd work, because only in the
 
pathological case\footnote{Theoretically, a user could collect copyright
 
  assignment from all known contributors and then do this, but this would
 
  indeed be the pathological case.}  would a user have the right to do so.
 

	
 
% FIXME-LATER: It would be good to have detailed info on each of 7a-f.
 
%              Here's some commented-out text that might be useful for 7a-b
 

	
 
%% Under subsections 7a and 7b, the requirements may include preservation of
 
%% copyright notices, information about the origins of the code or alterations
 
%% of the code, and different warranty disclaimers. Under subsection 7c, the
 
%% requirements may include limitations on the use of names of contributors and
 
%% on the use of trademarks for publicity purposes. In general, we permit these
 
%% requirements in added terms because many free software licenses include them
 
%% and we consider them to be unobjectionable. Because we support trademark fair
 
%% use, the limitations on the use of trademarks may seek to enforce only what
 
%% is required by trademark law, and may not prohibit what would constitute fair
 
%% use.
 

	
 
% FIXME-LATER:  Say removing additional restrictions
 

	
 
% FIXME-LATER: This text may be useful later:
 

	
 
%% Some have questioned whether section 7 is needed, and some have suggested
 
%% that it creates complexity that did not previously exist.  We point out to
 
%% those readers that there is already GPLv2-licensed code that carries
 
%% additional terms.  One of the objectives of section 7 is to rationalize
 
%% existing practices of program authors and modifiers by setting clear
 
%% guidelines regarding the removal and addition of such terms.  With its
 
%% carefully limited list of allowed additional requirements, section 7
 
%% accomplishes additional objectives, permitting the expansion of the base of
 
%% code available for GPL developers, while also encouraging useful
 
%% experimentation with requirements we do not include in the GPL itself.
 

	
 
\section{GPLv3~\S8: A Lighter Termination}
 

	
 
GPLv2 provided for automatic termination of the rights of a person who
 
copied, modified, sublicensed, or distributed a work in violation of the
 
license.  Automatic termination can be too harsh for those who have committed
 
an inadvertent violation, particularly in cases involving distribution of
 
large collections of software having numerous copyright holders.  A violator
 
who resumes compliance with GPLv2 technically needs to obtain forgiveness
 
from all copyright holders, and even contacting them all might be impossible.
 

	
 
GPLv3~\S8 replaces now grants opportunities for provisional and permanent
 
reinstatement of rights. The termination procedure provides a limited
 
opportunity to cure license violations.  If a licensee has committed a
 
first-time violation of the GPL with respect to a given copyright holder, but
 
the licensee cures the violation within 30 days following receipt of notice
 
of the violation, then any of the licensee's GPL rights that have been
 
terminated by the copyright holder are ``automatically reinstated''.
 

	
 

	
 
Finally, if a licensee violates the GPL, a contributor may terminate any
 
patent licenses that it granted under GPLv3~\S11, in addition to any
 
copyright permissions the contributor granted to the licensee.
 

	
 
% FIXME-LATER: write more here, perhaps linking up to enforcement
 

	
 

	
 
\section{GPLv3~\S9: Acceptance}
 

	
 
GPLv3~\S9 means what it says: mere receipt or execution of code neither
 
requires nor signifies contractual acceptance under the GPL.  Speaking more
 
broadly, GPLv3 is intentionally structured our license as a unilateral grant
 
of copyright permissions, the basic operation of which exists outside of any
 
law of contract.  Whether and when a contractual relationship is formed
 
between licensor and licensee under local law do not necessarily matter to
 
the working of the license.
 

	
 
\section{GPLv3~\S10: Explicit Downstream License}
 

	
 
% FIXME-LATER: this is a punt: need more time to write!
 

	
 
GPLv3~\S10 ensures that everyone downstream receives licenses from all
 
copyright holders.  It really is a generally straightforward section.
 

	
 
% FIXME-LATER: link up this paragraph to above sections.
 

	
 
GPLv3 removed the words ``at no charge'' from GPLv2~\S2(b) (in GPLv3,~\S5(b))
 
because it contributed to a misconception that the GPL did not permit
 
charging for distribution of copies.  The purpose of the ``at no charge''
 
wording was to prevent attempts to collect royalties from third parties.  The
 
removal of these words created the danger that the imposition of licensing
 
fees would no longer be seen as a license violation.  Therefore, GPLv3~\S10
 
adds a new explicit prohibition on imposition of licensing fees or royalties.
 
This section is an appropriate place for such a clause, since it is a
 
specific consequence of the general requirement that no further restrictions
 
be imposed on downstream recipients of GPL-covered code.
 
Note, however, GPLv3 removed the words ``at no charge'' from GPLv2~\S2(b) (in
 
GPLv3,~\S5(b)) because it contributed to a misconception that the GPL did not
 
permit charging for distribution of copies.  The purpose of the ``at no
 
charge'' wording was to prevent attempts to collect royalties from third
 
parties.  The removal of these words created the danger that the imposition
 
of licensing fees would no longer be seen as a license violation.  Therefore,
 
GPLv3~\S10 adds a new explicit prohibition on imposition of licensing fees or
 
royalties.  This section is an appropriate place for such a clause, since it
 
is a specific consequence of the general requirement that no further
 
restrictions be imposed on downstream recipients of GPL-covered code.
 

	
 
Careful readers of the GPL have suggested that its explicit prohibition
 
against imposition of further restrictions\footnote{GPLv2, section 6; Draft
 
  3, section 10, third paragraph.} has, or ought to have, implications for
 
those who assert patents against other licensees.  Draft 2 took some steps to
 
clarify this point in a manner not specific to patents, by describing the
 
imposition of ``a license fee, royalty, or other charge'' for exercising GPL
 
rights as one example of an impermissible further restriction.  In Draft 3 we
 
have clarified further that the requirement of non-imposition of further
 
restrictions has specific consequences for litigation accusing GPL-covered
 
programs of infringement.  Section 10 now states that ``you may not initiate
 
litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging
 
that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for
 
sale, or importing the Program (or the contribution of any contributor).''
 
That is to say, a patent holder's licensed permissions to use a work under
 
GPLv3 may be terminated under section 8 if the patent holder files a lawsuit
 
alleging that use of the work, or of any upstream GPLv3-licensed work on
 
which the work is based, infringes a patent.
 

	
 
\section{GPLv3~\S11: Explicit Patent Licensing}
 
\label{GPLv3s11}
 

	
 
% FIXME: These don't belong here, but it's closer to where it ought to be now.
 

	
 
It is important to note that section 11, paragraph 3 refers to a work that is
 
conveyed, and section 10, paragraph 2 refers to a kind of automatic
 
counterpart to conveying achieved as the result of a transaction. 
 

	
 
The patent licensing practices that section 7 of GPLv2 (corresponding to
 
section 12 of GPLv3) was designed to prevent are one of several ways in which
 
software patents threaten to make free programs non-free and to prevent users
 
from exercising their rights under the GPL. GPLv3 takes a more comprehensive
 
approach to combatting the danger of patents.
 

	
 
Software patenting is a harmful and unjust policy, and should be abolished;
 
recent experience makes this all the more evident. Since many countries grant
 
patents that can apply to and prohibit software packages, in various guises
 
and to varying degrees, we seek to protect the users of GPL-covered programs
 
from those patents, while at the same time making it feasible for patent
 
holders to contribute to and distribute GPL-covered programs as long as they
 
do not attack the users of those programs.
 

	
 
It is generally understood that GPLv2 implies some limits on a licensee's
 
power to assert patent claims against the use of GPL-covered works.
 

	
 
Therefore, we have designed GPLv3 to reduce the patent risks that distort and
 
threaten the activities of users who make, run, modify and share free
 
software.  At the same time, we have given due consideration to practical
 
goals such as certainty and administrability for patent holders that
 
participate in distribution and development of GPL-covered software.  Our
 
policy requires each such patent holder to provide appropriate levels of
 
patent assurance to users, according to the nature of the patent holder's
 
relationship to the program.
 

	
 
Draft 3 features several significant changes concerning patents.  We have
 
made improvements to earlier wording, clarified when patent assertion becomes
 
a prohibited restriction on GPL rights, and replaced a distribution-triggered
 
non-assertion covenant with a contribution-based patent license grant. We
 
have also added provisions to block collusion by patent holders with software
 
distributors that would extend patent licenses in a discriminatory way.
 

	
 

	
 
Draft 3 introduces the terms ``contributor'' and ``contribution,'' which are
 
used in the third paragraph of section 10 and the first paragraph of section
 
11, discussed successively in the following two subsections.  Section 0
 
defines a contributor as ``a party who licenses under this License a work on
 
which the Program is based.'' That work is the ``contribution'' of that
 
contributor.  In other words, each received GPLv3-covered work is associated
 
with one or more contributors, making up the finite set of upstream GPLv3
 
licensors for that work. Viewed from the perspective of a recipient of the
 
Program, contributors include all the copyright holders for the Program,
 
other than copyright holders of material originally licensed under non-GPL
 
terms and later incorporated into a GPL-covered work.  The contributors are
 
therefore the initial GPLv3 licensors of the Program and all subsequent
 
upstream licensors who convey, under the terms of section 5, modified works
 
on which the Program is based.
 

	
 
For a contributor whose contribution is a modified work conveyed under
 
section 5, the contribution is ``the entire work, as a whole'' which the
 
contributor is required to license under GPLv3.  The contribution therefore
 
includes not just the material added or altered by the contributor, but also
 
the pre-existing material the contributor copied from the upstream version
 
and retained in the modified version. Our usage of ``contributor'' and
 
``contribution'' should not be confused with the various other ways in which
 
those terms are used in certain other free software licenses.\footnote{Cf.,
 
  e.g., Apache License, version 2.0, section 1; Eclipse Public License,
 
  version 1.0, section 1; Mozilla Public License, version 1.1, section 1.1.}
 

	
 
The term ``patent license,'' as used in the third through fifth
 
paragraphs of section 11, is not meant to be confined to agreements
 
formally identified or classified as patent licenses.  The new second
 
paragraph of section 11 makes this clear by defining ``patent license,''
 
for purposes of the subsequent three paragraphs, as ``a patent license,
 
a covenant not to bring suit for patent infringement, or any other
 
express agreement or commitment, however denominated, not to enforce a
 
patent.''  The definition does not include patent licenses that arise by
 
implication or operation of law, because the third through fifth
 
paragraphs of section 11 are specifically concerned with explicit
 
promises that purport to be legally enforceable.
 

	
 
Our previous drafts featured a patent license grant triggered by all
 
acts of distribution of GPLv3-covered works.\footnote{In Draft 2 we
 
rewrote the patent license as a covenant not to assert patent claims. We
 
explain why we reverted to the form of a patent license grant in \S\
 
\ref{cov}.} Many patent-holding companies objected to this policy. They
 
have made two objections: (1) the far-reaching impact of the patent
 
license grant on the patent holder is disproportionate to the act of
 
merely distributing code without modification or transformation, and (2)
 
it is unreasonable to expect an owner of vast patent assets to exercise
 
requisite diligence in reviewing all the GPL-covered software that it
 
provides to others.  Some expressed particular concern about the
 
consequences of ``inadvertent'' distribution.
 

	
 
The argument that the impact of the patent license grant would be
 
``disproportionate,'' that is to say unfair, is not valid. Since
 
software patents are weapons that no one should have, and using them for
 
aggression against free software developers is an egregious act,
 
preventing that act cannot be unfair. 
 

	
 
However, the second argument seems valid in a practical sense.  A
 
typical GNU/Linux distribution includes thousands of programs. It would
 
be quite difficult for a redistributor with a large patent portfolio to
 
review all those programs against that portfolio every time it receives
 
and passes on a new version of the distribution. Moreover, this question
 
raises a strategic issue. If the GPLv3 patent license requirements
 
convince patent-holding companies to remain outside the distribution
 
path of all GPL-covered software, then these requirements, no matter how
 
strong, will cover few patents. 
 

	
 
We concluded it would be more effective to make a partial concession
 
which would lead these companies to feel secure in doing the
 
distribution themselves, so that the conditions of section 10 would
 
apply to assertion of their patents.  We therefore made the stricter
 
section 11 patent license apply only to those distributors that have
 
modified the program.  The other changes we have made in sections 10 and
 
11 provide strengthened defenses against patent assertion and compensate
 
partly for this concession. 
 

	
 
Therefore, in Draft 3, the first paragraph of section 11 states that a
 
contributor's patent license covers all the essential patent claims
 
implemented by the whole program as that contributor distributes it.
 
Contributors of modified works grant a patent license to claims that
 
read on ``the entire work, as a whole.'' This is the work that the
 
copyleft clause in section 5 requires the contributor to license under
 
GPLv3; it includes the material the contributor has copied from the
 
upstream version that the contributor has modified.  The first paragraph
 
of section 11 does not apply to those that redistribute the program
 
without change.\footnote{An implied patent license from the distributor,
 
however, may arise by operation of law. See the final paragraph of
 
section 11.  Moreover, distributors are subject to the limits on patent
 
assertion contained in the third paragraph of section 10.} 
 

	
 
We hope that this decision will result in fairly frequent licensing of
 
patent claims by contributors.  A contributor is charged with awareness
 
of the fact that it has modified a work and provided it to others; no
 
act of contribution should be treated as inadvertent.  Our rule also
 
requires no more work, for a contributor, than the weaker rule proposed
 
by the patent holders.  Under their rule, the contributor must always
 
compare the entire work against its patent portfolio to determine
 
whether the combination of the modifications with the remainder of the
 
work cause it to read on any of the contributor's patent claims.
 

	
 

	
 

	
 
We have made three changes to the definition of ``essential patent
 
claims'' in section 0.  This definition now serves exclusively to
 
identify the set of patent claims licensed by a contributor under the
 
first paragraph of section 11.
 

	
 
First, we have clarified when essential patent claims include
 
sublicensable claims that have been licensed to the contributor by a
 
third party.\footnote{This issue is typically handled in other free
 
software licenses having patent licensing provisions by use of the
 
unhelpful term ``licensable,'' which is either left undefined or is
 
given an ambiguous definition.}  Most commercial patent license
 
agreements that permit sublicensing do so under restrictive terms that
 
are inconsistent with the requirements of the GPL.  For example, some
 
patent licenses allow the patent licensee to sublicense but require
 
collection of royalties from any sublicensees.  The patent licensee
 
could not distribute a GPL-covered program and grant the recipient a
 
patent sublicense for the program without violating section 12 of
 
GPLv3.\footnote{Draft 3 provides a new example in section 12 that makes
 
this point clear.}  In rare cases, however, a conveying party can freely
 
grant patent sublicenses to downstream recipients without violating the
 
GPL.
 

	
 
Draft 3 now defines essential patent claims, for a given party, as a
 
subset of the claims ``owned or controlled'' by the party.  The
 
definition states that ``control includes the right to grant sublicenses
 
in a manner consistent with the requirements of this License.''
 
Therefore, in the case of a patent license that requires collection of
 
royalties from sublicensees, essential patent claims would not include
 
any claims sublicensable under that patent license, because sublicenses
 
to those claims could not be granted consistent with section 12.
 

	
 
Second, we now state that essential patent claims are those ``that would
 
be infringed by some manner, permitted by this License, of making,
 
using, or selling the work.'' This modified wording is intended to make
 
clear that a patent claim is ``essential'' if some mode of usage would
 
infringe that claim, even if there are other modes of usage that would
 
not infringe.
 

	
 
Third, we have clarified that essential patent claims ``do not include
 
claims that would be infringed only as a consequence of further
 
modification of the work.''  That is to say, the set of essential patent
 
claims licensed under the first paragraph of section 11 is fixed by the
 
the particular version of the work that was contributed.  The claim set
 
cannot expand as a work is further modified downstream.  (If it could,
 
then any software patent claim would be included, since any software
 
patent claim can be infringed by some further modification of the
 
work.)\footnote{However, ``the work'' should not be understood to be
 
restricted to a particular mechanical affixation of, or medium for
 
distributing, a program, where the same program might be provided in
 
other forms or in other ways that may be captured by other patent claims
 
held by the contributor.}
 

	
 

	
 
The downstream shielding provision of section 11 responds particularly
 
to the problem of exclusive deals between patent holders and
 
distributors, which threaten to distort the free software distribution
 
system in a manner adverse to developers and users. Draft 2 added a
 
source code availability option to this provision, as a specific
 
alternative to the general requirement to shield downstream users from
 
patent claims licensed to the distributor. A distributor conveying a
 
covered work knowingly relying on a patent license may comply with the
 
provision by ensuring that the Corresponding Source of the work is
 
publicly available, free of charge.  We retained the shielding option in
 
Draft 2 because we did not wish to impose a general requirement to make
 
source code available to all, which has never been a GPL condition.
 

	
 
The addition of the source code availability option was supported by the
 
free software vendors most likely to be affected by the downstream
 
shielding provision.  Enterprises that primarily use and occasionally
 
distribute free software, however, raised concerns regarding the
 
continued inclusion of a broadly-worded requirement to ``shield,'' which
 
appears to have been mistakenly read by those parties as creating an
 
obligation to indemnify.  To satisfy these concerns, in Draft 3 we have
 
replaced the option to shield with two specific alternatives to the
 
source code availability option. The distributor may comply by
 
disclaiming the patent license it has been granted for the conveyed
 
work, or by arranging to extend the patent license to downstream
 
recipients.\footnote{The latter option, if chosen, must be done ``in a
 
manner consistent with the requirements of this License''; for example,
 
it is unavailable if extension of the patent license would result in a
 
violation of section 12. Cf.~the discussion of sublicensable patent
 
claims in \S\ \ref{epc}.}  The GPL is intended to permit private
 
distribution as well as public distribution, and the addition of these
 
options ensures that this remains the case, even though we expect that
 
distributors in this situation will usually choose the source code
 
availability option.
 

	
 
Without altering its underlying logic, we have modified the phrasing of
 
the requirement to make clear that it is activated only if the
 
Corresponding Source is not already otherwise publicly available.  (Most
 
often it will, in fact, already be available on some network server
 
operated by a third party.)  Even if it is not already available, the
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