[GNUz] Moving ...

[rik-Xandros-test]

Jim Cheetham wrote:

>> Is that "/exploiting a loophole in the GPL/" or just plain unscrupulous?
>
> Neither, by a long shot.

Sorry, I meant the competition's treatment of (the GPL in) Nessus.
- Everything has the 'loophole' of others sidestepping the legal 
licensing requirements.

> The company owned the copyright, and therefore have the right to 
> license under any terms they liked.
>
> Despite being GPLd, the community had not submitted any significant 
> patches or functionality, and therefore the code was not jointly 
> owned. This meant that no-one else had to be consulted about the 
> license change.
>
I can see this problem, with voluntarism (in general) on the wane.

> Contrast with the Linux kernel - there are so many copyright holders 
> involved in that collection of code, any relicensing would have to get 
> agreement from every single one of them (even the ones that are 
> uncontactable). This is seen as a level of protection, because Linus 
> cannot "go bad" without rewriting huge portions.
>
> On the other hand, it will probably prevent the kernel from moving to 
> GPLv3, for the same reasons ...

Now that's the $64K Q.

Does the boat lodge on the sandbar (of profitabilty), and are passengers 
bound to jump ship?

Cheers, Rik