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

Dmitry Torokhov
2007-06-14T17:01:31Z

On 6/14/07, Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 06:32:57PM +0200, Bernd Paysan wrote:
>
> > BTW: If I grep through Linux, I find two files where you have noted your
> > copyright and the release conditions (GPL v2), and I think last time I did
> > the same thing, I found two GPLv2-files, as well - all other files with "Al
> > Viro" in it apparently have multiple authors. These two files may be the
> > same ones, or maybe there are two other files, making it four in total (or
> > some further I missed, the text of v2 only is not as normed as the text
> > for "v2 or later", but in general it's rare). These files clearly have to
> > be rewritten or premission has to be asked when updating COPYING to GPLv3.
> > But that's not a show-stopper.
>
> Rot. "Multiple authors" doesn't get you out of that. If you take a code
> available under GPLv2 or later and combine it with code under specific
> version of GPL, result is under than specific version of GPL. If you want
> to argue against that, make sure to Cc RMS on that, I would really like to
> hear his opinion.
>
> Multiple authors == need permission from each author with enough
> contributions to that file to make the contributions in question
> copyrightable.
>
> And in my case (and case of gregkh, and...) that would be considerably
> more than a couple of files. Really.

I would expect that if you contribute to a file that explicitely says
"GPL v2 or later" and you do not change that wording then you agree
GPL v2 or later for that particular contribution. So for example
drivers/net/plip.c could be changed to GPL v3 even though you
contributed to it.

--
Dmitry