Free software survives the original copyright holder [LWN.net]

Free software survives the original copyright holder

Posted Sep 2, 2004 8:25 UTC (Thu) by hingo (subscriber, #14792)
In reply to: Free software survives the original copyright holder by gdt
Parent article: Pointless ideology?

And what of the moral aspects of ignoring the author's explicit wish?

What about it? The guy knowingly releases code under the GPL. He knowingly goes against the hottest debated kernel policy by secretly smuggling in hooks to be used by a binary-only module. And now we should abandon some GPL code, because he asks for it. If you ask me, Linus and Greg have been bending over backwards for a guy that was only out to screw them.

In any case, I've understood that one good reason to pull the driver, is that it's not wise to have code hanging around that doesn't have a maintainer. So when somebody picks up this piece of abandoned GPL code and offers it back to the kernel, it will be included again. At least that what I read on kerneltrap.

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