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

From: Pavel Machek
Date: Thu Sep 06 2007 - 20:36:37 EST


On Mon 2007-09-03 04:58:58, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> David Schwartz wrote:
> >Either license can grant you the right to distribute
> >it, but how you get the
> >rights to distribute has *NO* effect on the recipient.
> >They receive a lawful
> >copy and any rights the original author grants them
> >under a license from
> >that original author. You have no power to grant or
> >modify rights to the
> >original work.
>
> Secondary parties have the power to grant or modify
> rights, if delegated to them by the original author.
>
> Relicensing and transfer of rights happens all the time.
> How do you think most music gets into consumer hands?

License is only a promise not to sue. Only original author is permitted to
sue in BSD/GPL case. David seems right here.

If Linus releases GPL/BSD program, you choose GPL and distribute it to
me, and I put it into proprietary evil app, I am _ok_.

You can't sue me, because you are not copyright holder.

Linus can't sue me, because he BSD licensed it.

=> I'm fine. Yep, copyright law is strange, and you may be right
outside U.S.
Pavel
--
(english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek
(cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
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