🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan8.212814.21601@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>In article <1iindhINNfu5@agate.berkeley.edu> jbuck@forney.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:
>>The rest of your argument falls apart because you seem to be under
>>the impression that I slap the GPL onto my work, I have taken rights
>>away from myself.  I have not.  As the owner of the work, I can make
>>another copy with a different copyright agreement attached.
>
>As I pointed out in another article, you can't.
>
>If you try making another copy with a different copyright agreement attached,
>or even another _almost_ copy, or even another program which is mostly, but
>not totally, different, all any would-be pirate has to do is say "whoops, you
>used some lines of code from a GPL program in that, so the whole thing is
>under the GPL".  How are you going to prove you took the code from a common
>(non-GPL) source, instead of copying from the GPL to the non-GPL program?

Because in the text of the code contributed to the GPL'd program, 
the author took the trouble to attach his/her copyright notice to
his/her contributed code, which is something that the GPL permits,
or perhaps the author took other measures to document his/her
ownership/authorship of that particular code.

The fact that such an action makes it difficult to "prove" the 
status of the code is not in any way relevant;  it is always the
responsibility of the copyright holder to document and enforce
his/her copyright.  In this case, a paranoid contributor to a
GPL'd program might wish to file a dated, notarized copy of the
source at with his or her attorney.
-- 
-- Bill Johnston (johnston@me.udel.edu)
-- 38 Chambers Street; Newark, DE 19711; (302)368-1949