Re: Fwd: That whole "Linux stealing our code" thing

From: Igor Sobrado
Date: Sun Sep 02 2007 - 09:01:06 EST


On Sun, 2 Sep 2007, Alan Cox wrote:

So, a multi-licensed file remains multi-licensed except when all authors
agree about a change in the licensing terms. And it is clear on the BSD

Not strictly true. They can either agree to a change and issue one or
they can convey to other parties the right to change the terms. The GPL
for example does this for version selection.

So, under a dual-licensed BSD/GPL code the latter license allows a developer to remove the GPL license itself and release a single-licensed BSD code if other parties want to do it?

A multi-licensed work (note work not file - don't assume a file is a
boundary of a work) which conveys the choice of licence (as some bits of
ath5k did) allows a receiving party to choose the licence it wishes.
Failing that OpenBSD would have turned itself GPL by adding that file as
according to your argument "it must be distributed under *all* these
licensing terms concurrently".

I would assume a file as a boundary of a work in the case that file is under different licensing terms to the rest of the software package. On a lot of software packages different modules are covered under different licensing terms.

We can choose what license terms we will honor; however, we do not have the ability to remove the licensing terms we do not like.

Igor.
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