linux-kernel - Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

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Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.98.0706151814380.14121@woody.linux-foundation.org>
Date:	Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:29:22 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Rob Landley <rob@...dley.net>
cc:	Michael Gerdau <mgd@...hnosis.de>,
	Daniel Hazelton <dhazelton@...er.net>,
	Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@...hat.com>,
	Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@...lub.uwaterloo.ca>,
	Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>,
	debian developer <debiandev@...il.com>,
	"david@...g.hm" <david@...g.hm>,
	Tarkan Erimer <tarkan@...one.net.tr>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, mingo@...e.hu
Subject: Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

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
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