Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

GPL 3 Forking Risks Discussed

Posted by Hemos on from the much-thunder-and-lightning dept.

sebFlyte writes ""I fear a lot of unpleasant forking action when the GPLv3 comes out." The words of Debian maintainer Matthew Palmer. ZDNet has an interesting look at the possibility of forking when GPLv3 emerges, with lots of reassurance from Eben Moglen (the FSF's chief lawyer)."

1 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Mod parent up by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some of the contributors are dead, too, in the non-figurative sense.
    Try to get them to relicense the part they hold the copyright on.

    Linux is the biggest GPLed project, with many thousands of separate copyright holders. The mere code audit would take years, not to mention trying to actually contact them. They are often unreachable, their mail address may be no longer valid, they may use the name Anonymous Chinese Dissident #75483, they may be in a persistent vegetative state, etc etc.

    And the Berne convention forbids you to ignore even a single copyright holder.

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.