Emacs and the GPL

Posted Aug 11, 2011 3:03 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239)
In reply to: Emacs and the GPL by Hausvib6
Parent article: Emacs and the GPL

The alternative approach would be:

1. Create useful software. It's FLOSS and MIT/X11.
2. "Forget" that some of the code in it was copied out of the leaked Windows 2000 source
3. Ask Microsoft for a cut of the proceeds

If you're the copyright holder and you gave the software to other people then estoppal will typically protect them from you. If someone else holds the copyright over part of it, then the situation's the same as above - whenever you distribute software you're taking the word of the person you got it from that they have the legal right to provide it to you under the claimed license. There's nothing special about the GPL here.