[License-review] License compatibility for FOSS aggregations

[John Cowan]

Lawrence Rosen scripsit:

> For example, John, you omitted a key fact when you analyzed my Riddle
> #6. I said that "Alice's original proprietary program was written
> and Alice's copyright registered on it the year Linus Torvalds was
> born." Linus is supremely talented but I'm confident he can't go back
> in time and claim rights over those very early works.

Of course he can't, though I don't know why you mentioned Linus
specifically: he's not one for enforcing his rights to the uttermost
farthing anyway.  What he can do, _according to the way most people think
about it_, is prevent Alice from putting chunks of his GPLed code into
later versions of her proprietary software.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Humpty Dump Dublin squeaks through his norse
                Humpty Dump Dublin hath a horrible vorse
But for all his kinks English / And his irismanx brogues
                Humpty Dump Dublin's grandada of all rogues.  --Cousin James