[LINK] Any more spin, and I'm going to throw up

[Damien Miller]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, David Chia wrote:

> If the programmer from a proprietary software company has cut corner
> in secretly utilizes fragment of GPL software code, and that has passed
> through the quality assurance without being noticed, and that software
> has been distributed/sold in binary form, then that company might have
> infringed the GPL copyright and they might have to release the source
> code for the "whole package" publicly as GPL code, not just the code
> fragment in question. That is what the proprietary software companies
> are afraid of. Even other non-GPL open source developers have to take
> notice about this.

This has happened a couple of times in the past - I don't know of any
cases where the proprietary software has been forced to relicense under
the GPL.

IANAL, but I imagine it would be fairly difficult to force companies 
to relicense substantially larger works especially if the GPL code 
crept in by stealth or stupidity.

-d

-- 
| By convention there is color,       \\ Damien Miller <djm@mindrot.org>
| By convention sweetness, By convention bitterness, \\ www.mindrot.org
| But in reality there are atoms and space - Democritus (c. 400 BCE)