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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    Re: PATCH: Asynchronous filtering
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () kde ! org>
Date:       2003-10-30 19:12:08
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On Wednesday 29 October 2003 09:31, Marc Mutz wrote:
> Now, what would happen if most of KDE's contributor's rights under the
> GPL are terminated?

in the case of KSSL as a specific example (generalities suck ;), those owning 
the copyrights on the KSSL code would still have all the  rights to it as its 
authors and could then rectify it by changing the license. the rest of us 
would have to wait for that before using KSSL again, or else code a 
replacement for it.

it wouldn't, however, automatically effect anything outside of KSSL. last time 
i checked KDE's ./configure script has a --without-ssl option, which 
presumable disables KSSL's linkage to OpenSSL.

the problem would be localized to KSSL (still not good, of course =). such 
things generally don't have a cascade effect (unless, of course, KDE decided 
to ship apps/libs with an illegal linkage to KSSL after knowing that the 
license was invalid)

there would also likely be a period of grace time to fix the issue in KSSL to 
prevent loss of license. at least that's typically what's allowed in the case 
of unwitting violations IME.

what's also interesting is that AFAIK the only people who can enforce a 
license are the people who own it. a third party can't go out and enforce 
someone else's copyrights or licenses (unless thepower to do is transferred 
to them explicitly, of course). so in the case of KSSL, it may turn out that 
the only people who can claim foul upon its license are the KSSL and OpenSSL 
copyright holders (and those they allow to represent them). somehow i doubt 
either group would care to do so.

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
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