GPL compliance

[Gary W. Swearingen]

deanlinkous <ulist at gs1.ubuntuforums.org> writes:

> I am confused as to what you'll are discussing? Someone thinks I need
> redhats permission to do something with GPL covered software? uh no...
> next question! :)

Many haven't bothered to keep track of what _was_ being discussed
(for several good and bad reasons, some my fault), so I'll not
answer the first question yet another time.

But I'll reply to the second one yet another time, with the hope that
you're not just trying to waste my time.  I never cease to be
astounded that people can misunderstand such a simple thing so badly.
I know I'm not a great writer, but I am reasonably good and am sure
that the fault here is with a few readers too lazy to comprehend.


If Daniel doesn't have Red Hat's permission (AKA license) to the
copyrights that Red Hat owns for parts of the Linux kernel, then
Daniel may not legally (re)publish it as he is planning to do.  This
is just basic copyright law which gives proprietary rights to works of
authorship and allows it to be licensed (in this case non-exclusively)
to others.  The text of the GPL used by Red Hat for the GPL'd IP in
question give terms and conditions for getting and keeping that
permission.

Repeat for all other GPL-using owners and similarly for owners who use
other licenses like X's.  Of course, nobody has the time to actually
do all of this.  They take (minor) legal risks and hope nobody will
care -- a very good bet.  In this case, Daniel hopes that Ununtu's
original publisher has done a good job so Daniel doesn't need to do
all the research to prove himself 100% legally pure.