On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 11:32, James M. Cape wrote: > On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 11:02 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote: > > On Thu, 2004-07-22 at 08:07, James M. Cape wrote: > > > The real question is whether or not copyright assignment allows for > > > retroactive license changes. If yes, then that could be a problem. If > > > no, then the community can always fork from the date before the license > > > change, so copyright assignment is not a threat. > > > > Yes, forking is definitely always possible; the GPL can't be revoked > > retroactively. > > So then any copyright assignment is really irrelevant as the software > can always continue to be free, even in the absolute worst-case > scenario. Of course the copyright assignment does allow the new copyright holder to use the code _also_ in a proprietary product. Some contributors may not care, others may. While that might not be something to worry about with respect to today's Novell, it is more difficult to know with respect to tomorrow's owner. Andreas -- Andreas J. Guelzow <aguelzow taliesin ca> Taliesin
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