On Thursday 06 August 2009 08:59:31 drew Roberts wrote: > On Wednesday 05 August 2009 21:26:19 Raymond Martin wrote: > > > > This was all in the context of distribution. Perhaps this was not clear. > > No, it was clear. The GPL cannot make someone else's code GPL *if* they > don't claim their own code to be GPL. > > In your given context though, you indicate that the code claimed to be GPL > which would make it GPL because the author gave a GPL license to it, not > because it contained another author's GPL code. > > Now an author *has* to GPL their own code that contains another author's > GPL code *or* be guilty of copyright violations but the second option is > available to the first author and the courts will have to sort it.
The code is GPL once you distribute it mixed with other GPL code and it still can be put out under another license by the original author. So you are splitting hairs where the context of the discussion needs to be considered. It was understood about an original authors copyrights. Nonetheless, any code mixed with GPL code and distributed automatically becomes GPL regardless of any other distribution of the same code under another license. An author does not have to give the code a license for it to come under GPL, the act of combining it with GPL code and distributing brings the GPL into force. The combining is considered a modified version of the original which must be distributed under the same license. See section A.2, subsection 5 of the GPL (version 2 in this case). Read the sentence "Therefore, by modifying, or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing, and or modifying the Program or works based on it. End of story. Any combination with other GPL stuff automatically puts the code under GPL. The distributing party is accepting the GPL by their own actions. Distributing the resultant product causes the GPL to come into effect. If they want to distribute their original code under a different license that can also be done. Raymond _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-dev mailing list Linux-audio-dev@lists.linuxaudio.org http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-dev