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

[Jan-Benedict Glaw]

On Sat, 2007-06-09 15:57:55 +1000, Neil Brown <neilb@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Saturday June 9, tarkan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 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@xxxxxxxxxx              +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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