Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Sat Jan 28 2006 - 18:14:10 EST




On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Al Viro wrote:
> >
> > - You may not distibute this for a fee, not even "handling"
> > costs.
> >
> > Mail me at "torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" if you have any questions."
> >
> > and that one was only valid between kernel versions 0.01 and 0.12 or
> > something like that.
>
> Interesting... What does that do to e.g. DVD with full (OK, modulo missing
> early versions) kernel history all way back to 0.01?

Well, the good news is that I was the only real copyright holder back then
(there's a couple of other people who contributed to 0.11 and/or 0.12,
mainly Ted T'so with the BSD terminal control stuff - ^Z and friends).

I used to even re-write patches to suit my style (this was back then, the
patches were smaller, and I was younger and had more energy). So some
things that others sent in patches for (I think Peter McDonald did pty's)
I ended up re-writing myself (and in the process I mixed up the master and
slave pty major number, iirc ;)

> Even funnier question is what does that do to full CVS including the
> early versions. Can that be distributed at all and what license would
> fit it? Arguing that it's mere aggregation is possible, but it's a
> bit of a stretch...

I think you can take it for granted that the GPL re-licensing was
retro-active. I'm the sole copyright holder for 99% of it, and there were
no objections to the relicensing even back when it happened, so I can
pretty much guarantee that there would be none now ;)

It was a kind of strange license. I didn't spend a whole lot of time
thinking about it ;)

Linus
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/