Re: [Gimp-developer] urgent

[Christopher Curtis <ccurtis0 gmail com>]

On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 7:13 PM, Michael Henning <drawoc darkrefraction com>
wrote:

> On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 11:06 AM, C R <cajhne gmail com> wrote:
>
> Applied to GIMP, this essentially means that as long as you own the (c) to
> > the materials used in your logo/image, your work is protected under the
> > GPLv3 licence, when output by GIMP.
>
> The clause you point out is specifically for programs that include
> GPL'ed content in their output. It does not apply for gimp. If you own
> the photos you started with, then you own the output.
>
> (IANAL, and the above is not legal advice.)

I'm going to assume that you are also not a native English speaker. You
appear to be interpreting the word "protected" to mean "covered". This was
not the author's intent, as evidenced by the later statement:

To say the output can not be used for
> sale or other business purposes would be discrimination, and would violate
> the very idea of FOSS.


GPL compilers can produce executables that are not GPL, and GPL image
editors can produce images that are not GPL.

GPLv3 creates ambiguity in that it implies that programs that are covered
by the GPL can produce output that is also covered by the GPL. The answer
to the question of then that can happen comes from the GPL FAQ:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatCaseIsOutputGPL

The answer is "Only when the program copies part of itself into the
output." This is still vague, so we can go to a better question by assuming
the opposite intent:

"Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my
program? [...]"

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOutput

Here, the answer is:

"In general this is legally impossible; [...]"

So, to be succinct, the output of Free Software, even GPLv3 Free Software,
is not covered by the GPL, per the GPL FAQ.

Chris