synaptics driver MIT license approach

Egbert Eich eich at suse.de
Tue May 8 13:37:24 PDT 2007


Yan Seiner writes:
 > Not really insane; that's how real estate is handled.  If you have a 
 > piece of land where ownership cannot be determined, or where the owner 
 > has died/disappeared and cannot be located, there is a legal framework 
 > in place for clearing title for the land.  Otherwise the landscape would 
 > be dotted with parcels you couldn't anything with....
 > 
 > All I'm asking is if there is a similar provision in the GPL and other 
 > FOSS licenses, and if not, shouldn't there be?  Otherwise perfectly good 
 > code will be thrown out because the owner couldn't be located.

The difference is: code can be rewritten. Land cannot be 'recreated'.
Moreover this is a matter of copyright, not patent where the mere
idea of how to do something is held hostage.

Cheers,
	Egbert.



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