Clarification of GPL

Sat Dec 13 17:42:47 UTC 2003

ti EMAIL said on Sat, Dec 13, 2003 at 03:38:59AM -0500,:

 > Each source file is tagged with a header naming him as copyright
 > followed by a GPL header.  For anybody to submit a patch to the
 > original distribution, you agree that he gets copyright of it.

Requiring assignment  of copyright in  patches is an issue  of project
management. Linux,  the kernel does  not require such  assignment. The
FSF  requires assignment for  packages in  the GNU  project. It  is an
issue of individual perception.

 > you transfer copyright to somebody after editing source under GPL, or
 > are these two things unrelated?

Will you please clarify this??

 > situations later on where the copyright is split out over a million
 > people, each of which could stop further distribution of his program.

Depending on how you look it. See above.

 >  For a code module/library I?ve written and released under the GPL,
 > is it possible to be incorporated into this previous program 

If you  do not  like assigning copyright  to the original  author, you
are free  to create  your own fork  by adding your  modifications, and
distribute the whole  thing yourselves. People did it  to GNU Emacs by
creating Xemacs.

 > Can you  add requirements to a  license in a source  file such that
 > your name  must always be included  as writing the  file if anybody
 > decides  to use  your code?   (Questioning if  this can  be legally
 > binding.)

This is what the GPL and several other free/libre licenses do. They go
a bit further;  and also require that the  modifications, if any, made
by the (re)distributor also should be mentioned.

Regarding legal binding  -- In all these years, only  the SCO has been
silly enough to question its bindingness.

-- 
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  Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,                   
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  Kerala, India.                          

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