Re: [MLUG] Open Source political philosophy

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	Once you GPL code it is GPL forever, but the owner of the code can also 
license the code anyway he wants. He can also take the code and his core 
developers and continue the developemnt without GPL. There is nothing 
stopping the developer/community from continuing the development of the 
pre-branched code seperately. Everybody but the owner, only has GPL 
licensed rights.
	Basically the owner can branch the code. He owns the copyright and is 
licensing the code back to the community. At any time he can quit the 
GPL license and use a differnt license, but what is already out to the 
community is always GPL.


Mike Miller wrote:
> Maybe I never understood the GPL at all.  I *thought* that GPL code had to
> stay GPL forever and that it was impossible to reroute it, so to speak, to
> another project with a different license.  I thought if someone GPL'd his
> code, it was essentially not his property anymore because anyone could
No the owner of the project does not give up IP rights. The developer 
who does not own the project could either have rights to his submits or 
not, that is based on the contract that you sign with the owner of the 
project. But the developer(community/non-owner) does not have IP rights 
to the whole body like the owner does.
> expand it in any direction so long as they did so under the GPL.  The note
> below indicates that I have been completely off base and the GPL does not
> stop someone from taking GPL code and using it under a non-GPL license.
It stops everyone but the project owner.
> 
> Can someone tell me what's going on with this?
> 
> Mike
> 
> 
> On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Blake C. Lewis wrote:
> 
> 
>>	If you own the copyright on the software you can release it anyway you
>>want. You can release it with GPL to the public and any license you want
>>to whoever. The thing that you have to watch out for is the potential of
>>owners to abuse the GPL. If I start a project that I own, and you sign
>>over your contributions to me, at anytime I can take the source and make
>>changes and pull the GPL from it. That is what happened to PHP3=>PHP4.
>>The original code is still GPL and you can keep changing it, but the
>>owner of the copyright gets that too.
>>	Another example which doesn't seem as bad is the MESA OpenGL library.
>>It was GPL and they wanted to integrate with XFree. So they changed the
>>license to XFree. So now the code can be extended and close by anyone.
>>The drivers that are developed could be taken by the chipset manufacture
>>and tweaked and release binary only.
>>	Quite a few of the new projects are setting up a non-for-profit orgs to
>>own the code with a stipulation in the bylaws to GPL the code. I would
>>feel much better about contributing to a project built around this
>>practice.
>>Blake
>>
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