Re: [gNewSense-users] KFV question no licence or author

[Karl Goetz]

On Fri, 2008-04-04 at 17:47 -0400, Bake Timmons wrote:
> >> It seems that we do *not* have to ask the author at all, since he has
> >> already granted us the choice(*), and we choose GPLv2 to be compatible
> >> with the Torvald's choice for the larger work.  Now if we wanted to
> >> distribute such a file as GPLv3, then I would ask the author, because we
> >> can only assume that he had the Linux kernel in mind when he used that
> >> language.
> >> 
> > Is this going to be our official practice? If so, we should change the
> > DocumentingYourWork site and maybe add it as an option in the kfv.el
> > program.

A work "Under the GPL" needs no clarification. a work without a
copyright notice should get clarificatio.

> 
> Rethinking the license issue, I now think that it is not really the
> author *directly* granting *us* something.  What happens is that anyone
> contributing to the Linux kernel "under the GPL" grants rights to a
> distributor, namely Linus Torvalds.  Torvalds in turn distributes it to
> the world.  Since Torvalds chooses GPLv2 only, our rights are narrowed
> by this *chain* of distribution.  We can only choose GPLv2.  Please
> correct me if I am missing something here.
> 

We can only distribute under GPL2 in the context of Linux. if you take
the same  GPL'd code (with no GPL version specified) you could then
include it in a GPL3 project and distribute it as GPL3.
kk

IANAL; IANGWL

> 
> _______________________________________________
> gNewSense-users mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnewsense-users
-- 
Karl Goetz <address@hidden>

signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part