The Copyright Act preempts the GPL

[Ken Brown]

Well, if everything else is a derivative...then how can anyone claim to
be the original owner?  I mean how many original owners can you have?
There can only be one, whether the license says you can transfer it to
10,000 people...right?  

So help me understand your earlier point.  To charge that someone has
violated a copyright, doesn't the original owner have to make the
charge? Otherwise, we don't know where the true property rights
----started right?

kb 

-----Original Message-----
From: jcowan at reutershealth.com [mailto:jcowan at reutershealth.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 3:21 PM
To: Ken Brown
Cc: 'daniel wallace'; license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: Re: The Copyright Act preempts the GPL

Ken Brown scripsit:
> I think Daniel makes an interesting point.  But let me ask since you
> emailed me your conversations.  Who is the original owner of Linux?  

Well (to be Clintonesque), that depends on what you mean by "Linux".
I'll
assume you mean the kernel.  It also depends on whether a court views
Linux
as a derivative work (in which case the original owner is Linus,
questionless),
a joint work, or a collective work.  My guess would be that it's one of
the
latter two possibilities.

-- 
John Cowan       http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
<jcowan at reutershealth.com>
        You tollerday donsk?  N.  You tolkatiff scowegian?  Nn.
        You spigotty anglease?  Nnn.  You phonio saxo?  Nnnn.
                Clear all so!  `Tis a Jute.... (Finnegans Wake 16.5)

--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3