Where was the original violation that kicked in GPLv2 Section 4?

Posted Aug 16, 2011 20:29 UTC (Tue) by dbruce (guest, #57948)
In reply to: Where was the original violation that kicked in GPLv2 Section 4? by cmccabe
Parent article: Android and the GPLv2 death penalty

"As far as I can see, the kernel can't be relicensed from GPLv2 without the consent of all the copyright holders."

IMHO, the reason the kernel is still GPLv2 is that Linus wants it that way. If he and the core kernel devs reached a consensus that they wanted to go to e.g. GPLv3 or later, any code belonging to those who refused to go along could be ripped out and replaced. Not so sure about the authors who don't reply or can't be reached, but if need be their code could be replaced as well. I just don't think there is any desire on Linus' part to switch, to put it mildly.

Where was the original violation that kicked in GPLv2 Section 4?

Posted Aug 20, 2011 16:21 UTC (Sat) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link]

What about all the drivers maintained by hardware vendors? Some vendors have consciously decided not to licence under 'or later'. If the hardware documentation has not been made freely available then a vendor can block what it sees as a hostile rewrite. That may just result in removal of the driver and loss of business for such a vendor. But the earlier customers would also be hurt by such a removal.