[Fsf-friends] Re: Fwd: Re: [gscp] Goa Syllabus for Linux

Mahesh T Pai paivakil@vsnl.net
Fri, 15 Nov 2002 13:33:41 +0530


Andrew Suares wrote:

 > I mean, what if the
 > company decides to discontinue the GPL for the particular package?
 > Obviously, it would be illegal to still distribute the software

Not quite.  Once GPL, always GPL.

Holder of the copyright (the original author) can of course, give the
s/w to anybody under a different license.  This is called dual licensing.

Newer versions may be released under non-GPL licenses.  In this case,
those who got copies under the GPL can continue to use, modify, and
distribute the older parts, so long as they continue to distribute /
release the sources.

So, the fears are unwarranted.

This is not the case with several licenses approved by the Open Source
Initiative, (OSI), like the BSD and MIT licenses.  That is why, BSD
license is non-free.

Please note that I did not comment on the issue of using brand names 
and trade marks in the syllabus.

Regards,
Mahesh T Pai.