This weekend's witch-hunt

[Rich Felker]

On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 10:41:59AM -0700, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > The copy that went through  _me_ had other redundant permission grants 
> > stripped off of it.  There are clean sources elsewhere (in the same 
> > directory, even) that have additional license grants, but that's not my 
> > problem.
> >   
> I really don't think this is the case.

It is. It's the same situation as a copyrighted publication of an old
literary work that's entered the public domain. You don't magically
get to copy the newly printed book (with all its typesetting,
additional notes, enhanced/restored illustrations, etc.) as if it were
public domain. You can of course copy just the text but ONLY once you
establish that the text you're copying is the actual original work
that's in the public domain, and not including any modifications made
by the publisher.

When you receive a modified version of your code from Busybox, it is a
derived work with multiple copyright holders. The party who prepared
and distributed this derived work is not required to license it under
all versions of GPL since you told them (when you licensed your
original work under "GPL v2 or later") that they can pick, at their
option, either GPL v2 or any later version. They picked v2. Thus the
derived work is under GPL v2 only.

> > Would you like to go talk to the SFLC directly?
> >   
> I know them, talk with Eben regularly, had lunch with the entire staff
> sometime last year. Since you insist, I will inquire with them.

Be sure to have them read Rob's arguments (preferably this full
thread) and not just to paraphrase what he said in some misleading way
that makes it look like you're right.

Rich