On 2/12/2010 1:44 PM, RJack wrote:
The procdures for acceptance and approval at the BusyBox development site: http://busybox.net/developer.html determine how the contributing authors works are jointly committed to the single program called BusyBox. The GPL has nothing to do with it. The joint authors may license their code under any license they wish but that fact doesn't prevent the formation of a joint work.
In order for BusyBox to be a joint work, every one of its authors must intend, or have intended, for it to be a joint work. Absent proof of such intention, it is not a joint work but a collective work, with derivative works generated by each change. As we see in <http://tushnet.blogspot.com/2009/04/settlement-disagreement-leads-to.html> "Each new version ... is a separate derivative work" software development spins off endless numbers of such derivative works during the course of development, no matter how minor the changes.
The joint work may be released under the GPL to the public
It is not a joint work.
but that fact does not change the reality that the GPL is
> unenforceable as a contract It is not a contract but a license, and it is enforceable only to the extent that someone is agreeing to be bound by it. If they do not wish to be bound by it, they need not be, but then they have no other permission to copy and distribute the GPLed work.
and is preeempted by 17 USC 301(a)
Preemption of copyright issues by federal law is completely irrelevant with respect to the GPL, which is a copyright license and grants extra permission beyond what unadorned copyright law allows, consistent with the rights of copyright holders to grant such permission as defined by 17 USC 106. <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/usc_sec_17_00000106----000-.html> _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
