Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders

From: Rene Herman
Date: Tue Jan 31 2006 - 17:00:39 EST


Linus Torvalds wrote:

Alan argues that that extra notice "changed" the license (and that any code that is older than 5 years would somehow not be GPLv2). I argue otherwise. I argue that for the whole history, Linux has been v2-only unless otherwise explicitly specified.

Hope you don't mind an opinion from a bystander...

I actually believe that Alan Cox is making a fair point, when viewed from the perspective of the strict language of the license.

The license as distributed with the kernel itself states that unless the program specifies the version of the GPL that it's under, any version will do. Alan makes the point that at least upto the 2.4.0-test8 addition, the program never specified the version, as the "v2" was only in the _license_, which is not the _program_.

And this is not a bad point -- the license and the program are indeed not the same; they are not even copyrighted by the same people. With the addition to the COPYING file, there's something added which clearly is yours, but before that it was just the generic GPL, copyrighted by the FSF.

As additional "proof" of the fact that the license can not be considered part of "the program" he pointed out that the GPL document in itself is not GPL compatible, meaning that under this strict interpretation it could even be argued that there would be a legal problem in combining this document with the rest of the program.

Sure, I noted all the "intent" stuff, and you may feel an interpretation this strict is not sensible, but I really do believe he's making a fair point if you do not want to trust the law, and all judges, to always be as sensible as you want them to be.

And I don't think even Alan will argue that the "v2 only" thing
hasn't been true for the last five years.

I would not at least. The added bit needs to be considered part of the program itself, solving the issue.

Rene.

-
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/