[Fedora-legal-list] Forced copyright assignment

[Matt McCutchen]

On Tue, 2011-02-01 at 12:44 -0700, Tom Callaway wrote:
> On 01/31/2011 11:23 AM, Matt McCutchen wrote:
> > hey say that
> > the copyright holder's actions never "violate" the GPL, at least with
> > respect to distribution and modification.  This would appear consistent
> > with my interpretation that the distribution and modification terms are
> > conditions of the copyright license offered to licensees, and not
> > licensor commitments.
> 
> Except that it is logically invalid. If the copyright holder is not
> promising via the GPL to provide the source to those who are using the
> Program under the terms, how are those parties expected to pass the
> source along to anyone else?

That's too bad for them.  Since they cannot meet the conditions of the
distribution license, they cannot legally distribute the software at
all: the license is unusable.  This is just a special case of the
principle stated in GPLv2 section 7.

So it is possible to have a work that is licensed under the GPL and yet
cannot be distributed, but this is just a technicality.  One would hope
that references to "releasing a work under GPLvX" in contracts and the
like would be interpreted to entail releasing the source, according to
the parties' intent.

-- 
Matt