On 1/20/07, Kevin Brown <kevin_brown@qwest.net> wrote:
>
> >     GPL is based on copyright. The copyright holder has ALL the rights,
> and
> >     may assign them however they wish. If they choose to offer it as
> GPL,
> >     then of course they are bound by that (being their own agreement by
> >     their own choice), but that *doesn't* mean they can't also license
> it
> >     other ways.
> >
> >
> >    Exactly.  The GPL is an agreement with the public, and once it is
> > made it is not the right of the originator to change that.  This is a
> > situation that has come up repeatedly in the past few years.  Recently I
> > have been dealing with a project called JasperReports which is a Java
> > based report engine similar to Crystal Reports.
> >
> >     1) At some point in history the original designer released the code
> > under the GPL.
> >     2) Then reports indicate that he ceded his copyrights to the company
> > Japser Reports, Inc.( or somesuch name ).
> >     3) Now JasperReports has not technically changed the license, but
> > they feel that they can *grant the right to invalidate GPL terms*.  This
> > right is bought as part of a service package.
> >
> >   In my estimation the problem began at step 2.  The author doesn't have
> > any rights over the code if he released it as GPL at step 1.  It wasn't
> > his to sell or to alter in any way, it was granted to the public.  The
> > company _does not have the right to change the terms of the GPL_
> > regardless of the codes origin or their investment in its development.
>
> Releasing code under the GPL is the not the same as releasing under the
> Public Domain.  Under the GPL the original author still owns the
> copyright for the code released.  He is LICENSING it to others to use
> under the restrictions given in the GPL.  If he then sells the code to a
> company, they now own the copyright to it.  They can't prevent others
> from taking the copies that they have obtained under the GPL from
> redistributing, but they can stop licensing the copy they have under the
> GPL and release a new version under a different license.



  Kevin,

   That makes some level of sense to me...  So the copyright owner can still
relicense the code under a different scheme?

   It seems to make little sense because there are so many GPL projects that
have countless contributors whose identity is buried beneath numerous
revisions.

  -jmz




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