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

Jan-Benedict Glaw
2007-06-09T07:12:39Z

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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

--
Jan-Benedict Glaw jbglaw@lug-owl.de +49-172-7608481
Signature of: God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of
the second : things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die.

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