Hacker News Reader

I suppose they were providing the stockfish software to Chessbase (and everyone else) under the GPL, but now they won't do that any more.

I don't think that prevents somebody sympathetic (if such a person exists) from re-distributing it to Chessbase though.

View on HN

It doesn't stop another person redistributing -- but then Chessbase still has no license for the copy they received. It doesn't help them.

> I don't think that prevents somebody sympathetic (if such a person exists) from re-distributing it to Chessbase though.

Would this be legal?

No. Stockfish owns the copyright to their code. You can't copy stockfish code without a license from stockfish. There's no provision in the GPL for some third party to re-grant a GPL license to someone else after their license was terminated.

Don't think it's a problem to give them the code, as long as your own license isn't terminated.

But it would be a breach of copyright for Chessbase to distribute or modify the code, after their license has been terminated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com