Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

[Tarkan Erimer <tarkan@netone.net.tr>]

Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-06-09 15:57:55 +1000, Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de> wrote:
>   
>> On Saturday June 9, tarkan@netone.net.tr wrote:
>>     
>>> As we know the forthcoming GPL V3 will be not compatible with the GPL V2 
>>> and Linux Kernel is GPL V2 only.
>>> So, another point is, which is previously mentioned by Linus and others, 
>>> that if it is decided to upgrade the Linux Kernel's License to GPL V3, 
>>> it is needed the permission of all the maintainers permission who 
>>> contributed to the Linux Kernel and there are a lot of lost or dead 
>>> maintainers. Which makes it impossible to get all the maintainers' 
>>> permission.
>>>       
>> You don't need the permission of maintainers.  You need the permission
>> of copyright owners.  The two groups overlap, but are not the same.
>> Dead people cannot own anything, even copyright.  Their estate
>> probably can.  I don't think it is theoretically impossible to get
>> everyone's permission, though it may be quite close to practically
>> impossible. 
>>     
>
> And the next question is: How much copyright does a copyright owner
> own?  For example, think of drivers written by one person, but a small
> number of lines changed here and there by others to adopt the code to
> new APIs.  Ask them all, I think?
>
> MfG, JBG
>
>   

And maybe another questions should be : How long a copyright owner can 
hold the copyright, if died or lost for sometime ? if died, the 
copyright still should be valid or not ? If lost, what the law orders at 
this point for copyright holding ?