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
--
.0000. communication.
.0001. development.
.0010. strategy.
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JOSHUA M. ZEIDNER
IT Consultant
++power; ++perspective; ++possibilities;
( 602 ) 490 8006
jjzeidner@gmail.com
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