Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Sat, 28 Jan 2006, Al Viro wrote:
> > 
> > 	- You may not distibute this for a fee, not even "handling"
> > 	  costs.
> > 
> >   Mail me at "torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi" if you have any questions."
> > 
> > and that one was only valid between kernel versions 0.01 and 0.12 or 
> > something like that.
> 
> Interesting...  What does that do to e.g. DVD with full (OK, modulo missing
> early versions) kernel history all way back to 0.01?

Well, the good news is that I was the only real copyright holder back then 
(there's a couple of other people who contributed to 0.11 and/or 0.12, 
mainly Ted T'so with the BSD terminal control stuff - ^Z and friends).

I used to even re-write patches to suit my style (this was back then, the 
patches were smaller, and I was younger and had more energy). So some 
things that others sent in patches for (I think Peter McDonald did pty's) 
I ended up re-writing myself (and in the process I mixed up the master and 
slave pty major number, iirc ;)

> Even funnier question is what does that do to full CVS including the
> early versions.  Can that be distributed at all and what license would
> fit it?  Arguing that it's mere aggregation is possible, but it's a
> bit of a stretch...

I think you can take it for granted that the GPL re-licensing was 
retro-active. I'm the sole copyright holder for 99% of it, and there were 
no objections to the relicensing even back when it happened, so I can 
pretty much guarantee that there would be none now ;)

It was a kind of strange license. I didn't spend a whole lot of time 
thinking about it ;)

		Linus
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