Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on September 30, 2004 06:25 PM
Indeed.
If I make a derived work of a GPL'd program and distribute it under a proprietary license, that *does not mean* that you are allowed to strip that license from my work and apply the GPL instead.
It only means that the copyright holder of the original GPL'd program (and nobody else!) may sue me for copyright infringement. You can't be sure that the lawsuit will end with my work falling under the GPL -- and even if it would, you can't act in advance as if it already had. For instance, we could reach a settlement by which I'd pay some money and acquire the rights to keep selling my work under the proprietary license.
Until my license is declared void in court or I relicense my work (either on my own will or because forced by court order), *the license remains legally valid and binding* and by no way you can ever redistribute my work under different terms.
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Re:A license has no power to coerce actions
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on September 30, 2004 06:25 PMIf I make a derived work of a GPL'd program and distribute it under a proprietary license, that *does not mean* that you are allowed to strip that license from my work and apply the GPL instead.
It only means that the copyright holder of the original GPL'd program (and nobody else!) may sue me for copyright infringement. You can't be sure that the lawsuit will end with my work falling under the GPL -- and even if it would, you can't act in advance as if it already had.
For instance, we could reach a settlement by which I'd pay some money and acquire the rights to keep selling my work under the proprietary license.
Until my license is declared void in court or I relicense my work (either on my own will or because forced by court order), *the license remains legally valid and binding* and by no way you can ever redistribute my work under different terms.
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