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Comment by eurleif | Hacker News Reader

>Since both of Twin Peaks' products are released under a proprietary license, there was no source code of any changes it made to mount released, which is a violation of the GPLv2.

Seems like Twin Peaks could resolve this by just releasing the source code to their version of mount. Maybe Red Hat will be able to get damages out of it, but if Twin Peaks releases the code in a timely fashion, I doubt Red Hat will be able to get an injunction against their product sales. (IANAL.) Meanwhile, the patent suit goes on.

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The GPL has a clause saying that if its terms are violated, all rights granted to the violator by the GPL are terminated. So if Twin Peaks did indeed copy Red Hat's mount code as alleged, they would never be allowed to distribute that code again (without specific permission).

Term 5? All that says is if you don't accept the terms, you don't get to use the software. There's no irrevocable termination of rights.

At worst, all they have to do is download a new copy of mount and presto, they have a new license.

[err, that's for gpl2. gpl3 has a more complicated termination procedure.]

ok, so in light of gpl3, they just need to go back and get a gpl2 copy of mount. It's not like mount has changed all that much, I'm sure the 2007 version will suffice. Or they could just write their own. How many lines of code are we talking about here?

Term 4 in GPLv2. "Any attempt otherwise to copy ... will automatically terminate your rights under this License."

Read right over that. But I suspect they can still just download another copy, as the second download would be a new offer, and they can then agree and comply with that one.

It's not that simple. Relevant reading in this context:

https://lwn.net/Articles/455013/

"Each kernel release is a different work; the chances that any given piece of code has been modified in a new release are pretty high. One could argue that each kernel release comes with its own license; the termination of one does not necessarily affect rights to other releases."

That is the argument I am making.

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