Implicit relicensing

Posted Aug 21, 2009 22:26 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091)
In reply to: Devices that phone home by mjg59
Parent article: Devices that phone home

Bear in mind that any legal argument that says the kernel can be relicensed to GPLv3 without explicit permission of all copyright holders probably also implies that the kernel (and, by extension, other large open source works) can be relicensed to a non-Free license without explicit permission of all copyright holders.

IANAL, but not likely. When (if) a judge looks into the matter she is likely to look into the intent of the original and the modified licenses. If two are very similar in spirit but differ as to the details the change is quite reasonable. If however the original is the GPL and the modified is Microsoft EULA for Office, then this argument is not going to go far. And of course most code owners are not likely to sue if both licenses really convey the same meaning.

Implicit relicensing

Posted Aug 22, 2009 10:56 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

the problem is that many kernel developers do not consider GPLv2 and GPLv3 to have the same intent. they have been very vocal about this disagreement. so if you get a judge to override the explicit statements of the developers saying that they disagree with the anti-tivo provisions of the GPLv3, then why couldn't the judge override any other considerations (like release of source code) for a change to another license?

Implicit relicensing

Posted Aug 23, 2009 19:18 UTC (Sun) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

If you have vocal developers against the change then it is not feasible to start with (even if as in this case the FSF, creators of the license, think it has the same intent). We were talking about implicit relicensing, where developers still active all agree, and there is a number of unreachable contributors. If one of those contributors -- say, Jeff Merkey -- did later come out and say that the change was unreasonable then there is good argument to counter it: all developers present agreed that the two licenses had the same intent.