GPL 3 to Take on IP, Patents (eWeek) [LWN.net]

GPL 3 to Take on IP, Patents (eWeek)

Posted Nov 27, 2004 4:31 UTC (Sat) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159)
In reply to: GPL 3 to Take on IP, Patents (eWeek) by vgough
Parent article: GPL 3 to Take on IP, Patents (eWeek)

I think the assumptions I made are valid.

If you want to distribute the combined work of the kernel contributors, you'll need to obey the licenses of all the various bits. The GPLv2 states that you can't impose additional restrictions not included in the license, so there is an upper limit to the restrictions you can apply. Furthermore, you are going to have to obey the GPLv2 since some of the code says you can only distribute it under those terms.

Given these constraints, what license other than GPLv2 could you distribute the whole? (of course, you may be able to separate out a component and distribute it under different terms). The "mere aggregation" clause of the GPLv2 doesn't apply here, due to the fact that all the code gets distributed and linked together.

To address your second point, in order to include the some GPLv3 code in the kernel, you'd need to make sure it was compatible with the other licenses in use. It would clearly be compatible with code licensed as "GPLv2 or later", but would likely be incompatible with GPLv2 only code (I don't see how they'd be able to implement some of the ideas for GPLv3 without adding new restrictions). So to integrate GPLv3 code, you'd need permission from all the copyright holders who haven't already given their permission by licensing under "GPLv2 or later".

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