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Re: SGI releases IA64 C C++ and F90 compiler under GPL
- To: martin at loewis dot home dot cs dot tu-berlin dot de
- Subject: Re: SGI releases IA64 C C++ and F90 compiler under GPL
- From: kenner at vlsi1 dot ultra dot nyu dot edu (Richard Kenner)
- Date: Mon, 22 May 00 06:26:43 EDT
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, torvalds at transmetaa dot com
Just to repeat the legal excuses: The GPL could not be enforced in
court if there are hundreds of contributors; it is the authors that
would need to collectively (!) claim that their copyright was
violated.
I don't believe that's correct, at least not in the US. Each copyright holder
can individually enforce their copyright.
The issue is more of being sure one can distribute the program.
*That* can require the consent of all the copyright holders. More to
the point, how do we know that somebody who claims copyright actually
owns it? If he doesn't, then we can no longer distribute the program
in question. A major point of the copyright assignment is the
certification that the person has has the copyright ownership and
indemnifies that FSF if it turns out he doesn't.