From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (smtp1.linux-foundation.org [172.17.192.35]) by mail.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id DD796487 for ; Fri, 31 Jul 2015 19:06:54 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bedivere.hansenpartnership.com (bedivere.hansenpartnership.com [66.63.167.143]) by smtp1.linuxfoundation.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B3217123 for ; Fri, 31 Jul 2015 19:06:53 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: <1438369611.2179.70.camel@HansenPartnership.com> From: James Bottomley To: Christoph Lameter Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2015 12:06:51 -0700 In-Reply-To: References: <1435997161.3324.33.camel@infradead.org> <20150707143447.6f345e91@gandalf.local.home> <1436298670.3324.107.camel@infradead.org> <559C3F56.8040606@roeck-us.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: ksummit-discuss@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Ksummit-discuss] [CORE TOPIC] GPL enforcement actions List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Fri, 2015-07-31 at 13:45 -0500, Christoph Lameter wrote: > On Tue, 7 Jul 2015, Guenter Roeck wrote: > > > ... and then have the LF attorneys brief LF member companies about the > > outcome of the meeting. I always find those legal briefings very useful. > > One subject that I would like to have some clarification on is relicensing > of in-kernel-code. There were a couple of license changes recently from > GPL to "pick onee GPL or BSD" in the infiniband stack. I was a bit > surprised by that being possible. > > Presumably the copyright holders have to agree to this. What exactly > qualifies to be a copyright holder? If one is mentioned in the file > header? If one modified a line of code in the file? It's the copyright law definition: for a work (or a modification of a work) to be eligible for copyright protection it (or the modification) must rise to the level of being original. There's a lot of case law over what this means for a book, but very little over what this means for a computer program. In one of the book decisions, the US Supreme Court did say that originality requires "a modicum of creativity" (that was a case about copyrighting the phone book) which likely applies to programs as well. There's also case law that implies things that are common patterns in programming (like correcting a use after free) may not be original enough but beyond that, it's anyone's guess. James