Re: License violation in "new" Plex86
Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com> writes:
> Glenn Maynard wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 11:02:51PM +0200, Robert Millan wrote:
>>> The main author of Plex86 forked his own project (heh) to create the
>>> "new" Plex86 effort, and relicensed it under the MIT/X license. He
>>> asserted that, as the copyright holder, he has permission to do so.
>>>
>>> But Plex86 included many contributions of different developers under the
>>> LGPL. In order to relicense, he'd need either to have permission from
>>> each of the copyright holders of the old Plex86 project, or
>>> remove/replace the code for which he doesn't own the copyright.
>>
>> For what it's worth, there have been a lot of vague mumblings about
>> authors of "joint works" being able to license the work without requiring
>> permission
>> from other authors.
> Even if true, it doesn't apply to "derivative works"; it would apply to
> cases where two people, together, wrote the work jointly, at one time --
> not to a case where one person edited the preexisting work of another
> person. (Of course, that's a really fuzzy line.)
So, looking at the decision of the Gaiman/McFarlane case, that doesn't
appear to be the case: despite the sequential nature of comic book
production (storyine -> script -> editor -> art -> publication), the
characters were regarded as very clear joint works by the court.
That's not free software, that's comic books, which is why I didn't
mention it before.
>> However, I've yet to see confirmation of this from a
>> copyright lawyer, and I'm not aware of any major project actually doing
>> this. (I suppose it would be against the FSF's interests to confirm this,
>> since it
>> loosens the GPL's "hold" somewhat.) If anyone has a competent source on
>> this as it relates to free software, though, I'd be interested in it.
>>
>
> --
> Make sure your vote will count.
> http://www.verifiedvoting.org/
--
Brian Sniffen bts@alum.mit.edu
Reply to: