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

Bongani Hlope
2007-06-14T23:14:20Z

On Thursday 14 June 2007 21:32:08 Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jun 14, 2007, lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen) wrote:
> > They let you have the code and make changes to it,
>
> Not to the software installed in the device.

So now you want access to all the software that is installed in their device?
Could you explain that please? You do have access to the GPL code that they
used. If you buy one of Google's Search Appliance, are you expecting to allow
you to make changes to the software that is installed on that device?

>
> What they do is like an author A who distributes a program to user B
> under a non-Free Software license, and to user C under a Free Software
> license.
>
> C passes the program on to B under the same license. Now B has two
> copies of the program. One is free, the other is not.
>
> Except that TiVO had no right to distribute the program under non-Free
> terms in the first place, because it was not the author, and the
> license it had explicitly said it couldn't impose further
> restrictions.

Reread what you wrote here and see the complete lack of logic in your
argument.

Author A are Linux developers who distribute their software under GPL 2, TiVO
gets the software under the same license and distributes it to their end
users. They then make the all the changes to the Linux Kernel available to
their end users under the same terms that they got from the Linux kernel
developers.

What freedom did they take away?