updating the GPL's status in http://www.opensource.org/licenses/category ?

[Björn Terelius]

On Jan 20, 2010, at 4:13 PM, John Cowan wrote:

> Raj Mathur scripsit:
>
>> On an unrelated note, is Linus' agreement only a necessary  
>> condition for
>> GPL v3 to be accepted for the Linux kernel, or is it both necessary  
>> and
>> sufficient?  My guess would be the former, since each individual
>> contributor has to agree to a change in licence, right?
>
> That is widely believed (including by members of this list) but it is
> almost certainly incorrect, at least in the U.S.  The Linux kernel  
> is a
> work of joint authorship, defined by the Copyright Act as "a work  
> prepared
> by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions be
> merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole".
>
> Any joint author may make a non-exclusive license under whatever  
> terms;
> see http://www.publaw.com/joint.html (which makes no reference to
> software) or Thomson v. Larson, 147 F.3d 195, 199 (2d Cir. 1998):  
> "Joint
> authorship entitles the co-authors to equal undivided interests in the
> whole work -- in other words, each joint author has the right to use  
> or
> to license the work as he or she wishes, subject only to the  
> obligation
> to account to the other joint owner for any profits that are made."
> In the case of FLOSS software, there are of course no profits.

Thats horrible! If the courts would uphold this (regarding software),
it would completely undermine the the open source licenses.
Someone could for example make a contribution (however insignificant)
to an GPLed project and then relicense the work under a more permissive
license.

By the way, what happens after every line of code in that contribution  
is
removed? Would he still have an equal share in the work?

- Björn