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

Tarkan Erimer
2007-06-10T10:00:39Z

david@lang.hm wrote:
> On Sun, 10 Jun 2007, Tarkan Erimer wrote:
>
>> Date: Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:43:28 +0300
>> From: Tarkan Erimer <tarkan@netone.net.tr>
>> To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
>> Subject: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3
>>
>> 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 ?
>
> I believe that in the US it's life + 90 years.
>
> David Lang
Hmm... Really,it is damn too much time to wait! It's really better idea
to replace the code of this person as said before instead of waiting
such 90+ years!