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On Sat, 2004-10-09 at 07:13, Duncan wrote: |
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> Of course the last clause doesn't hold if Gentoo insists on transfer of |
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> copyright, as it could then be taken private. Not that I expect it will |
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> happen, but the insistence on rights assignment, not only GPL licensing |
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> for any code contributed, /does/ leave open both that possibility, and the |
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> question, for those wishing to make such allegations. |
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The same holds true for the FSF, which also has all copyright |
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transferred to it (or given to the public domain). It goes both ways, |
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and to have the things you GPL'd get defended, you have to have a little |
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trust. "With great power comes great responsibility." |
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> There may be those who prefer GPL and for which that license forms much of |
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> their motivation. These sorts of folks take comfort in for instance the |
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> fact that it'd be practically impossible to change the Linux kernel code |
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> license. There are to many parts owned by to many people, and getting |
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> them all to agree would be essentially impossible, as would rewriting the |
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> parts from those who don't agree, because the code is so interwoven. |
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Getting them all to agree when the code is stolen would be difficult as |
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well. |
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> When |
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> a single entity demands ownership of all code, that barrier to taking it |
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> private disappears. Of course, as with the SSH code which went private, |
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> it can then be forked, but some (including myself) prefer preventing the |
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> possibility of it ever going proprietary-ware in the first place, if at |
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> all possible. |
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If you don't trust the Gentoo Foundation, there are bigger issues here. |
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-- |
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Donnie Berkholz |
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Gentoo Linux |
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