It's about proprietary forks, of course

Posted Feb 1, 2010 22:56 UTC (Mon) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943)
In reply to: Canonical copyright assignment policy 'same as others' (ITWire) by Baylink
Parent article: Canonical copyright assignment policy 'same as others' (ITWire)

Baylink wrote:

Mark's missing it. Copyright assignment policies are an end run around the GPL: They're an attempt to make it practical to *take the GPL off* of code which currently carries it.

It might be pointed out that Shuttleworth rather flagrantly ignores the very question he himself posed: "The most common complaint I've heard is 'why can't a company accept my patches to them under the same licence that they give me the original code?" He asks that, and then changes the subject to what "that suggests".

Why can't a company do that, then? Correct answer: "Of course we can, but would rather not, because we want to retain he option of proprietary licensing." Shuttleworth is forthright about that, higher up in the article: ""All copyright assignment agreements empower dual licensing, and relicensing, and as a result such projects attract more investment than other projects which don't create the same opportunities for underwriting companies."

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com