Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758787AbXFPBa0 (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:30:26 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752014AbXFPBaP (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:30:15 -0400 Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:48385 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751543AbXFPBaN (ORCPT ); Fri, 15 Jun 2007 21:30:13 -0400 Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:29:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Linus Torvalds To: Rob Landley cc: Michael Gerdau , Daniel Hazelton , Alexandre Oliva , Lennart Sorensen , Greg KH , debian developer , "david@lang.hm" , Tarkan Erimer , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , mingo@elte.hu Subject: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3 In-Reply-To: <200706152103.06921.rob@landley.net> Message-ID: References: <200706150825.15491.mgd@technosis.de> <200706152103.06921.rob@landley.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2213 Lines: 49 On Fri, 15 Jun 2007, Rob Landley wrote: > > Technically what they're holding back is _trademark_ rights, which are a > different area of IP law and not addressed by the GPL. (I know you know > this, but just for the record...) No, technically Red Hat really *does* have copyrights of their own. Red Hat owns the "compilation copyright" on their distribution. That means, for example, that even if they have _only_ open source programs on their DVD image, you still are not necessarily able (without their permission) to set up a "cheap-cd's" kind of operation, and sell their CD-ROM/DVD images for a lower price. So yes, they do own the Red Hat trademark too, but they fundamentally do own copyrights over and beyond those of the individual programs they distribute! Now, I think it so happens that the RHEL DVD's contains other programs than just open source, and that you couldn't legally copy them *anyway*, but that's a different issue. Also, happily, a lot of vendors do not *want* to exercise their copyright in the compilation, so you can go to cheapbytes.com, and you'll find Fedora CD's, OpenSuSE CD's, Ubuntu CD's, etc, and as far as I know, they're all perfectly legal. Exactly because open-source vendors usually don't want to look nasty by limiting the compilation, when they can't really limit the individual parts anyway. > The five main areas of IP law as I understand them are copyright, patent, > trademark, contract, and trade secret. I'd not put contract there, but fair enough. But what I was really trying to point out is that there are many different "levels" of copyright. So you can own a "copyright in the compilation" - which just means that you own the details of how you set it all together - _without_ actually necessarily owning the copyrights in any of the individual packages (although you obviously have to have a license to _make_ a compilation of them - but the GPLv2 is one such license). Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/