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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

"His suicide also raised new questions: Who owned the code now? (Answer: he willed all his intellectual property to Sean Palmer, who gives the project his blessing.)"

Isn't his deaddrop code GPL licensed?

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The GPL depends on the body of copyright law for enforcement. An entity that violates the GPL by, for example, making a derivative work and not releasing the source, legally would be held to account by the owner of that particular project's copyright. This works because copyright prohibits copying software except by express permission of the copyright holder. The GPL grants anybody the right to copy the software as long as they abide by the license. Once you violate the license, then your right to copy or distribute the software is revoked.

That doesn't answer the question of who owns the code. The code must have an owner to enforce the GPL or re-license or whatever.

Yes, but the quote still implies some confusion about things.

If the code is licensed GPL, you do not need the blessing of the owner, you already have a license. If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright? There are reasons you might care, but they are not obvious, and the OP does not say why he was interested -- the implication of that sentence to the casual non-geek reader, is that the new yorker needed the copyright owners permission to launch. The OP doesn't even mention the GPL.

If the code really is licensed GPL, that passage is misleading, is it not? Probably because the author himself is confused.

>If the code is licensed GPL, and you want to use it, why do you even care who owns the copyright?

GPL protects the users' investments in that as a purchaser (there has to be a better word than purchaser here) of a derivative of GPL will have freedoms 0 through 3[1].

-- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0). The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2). The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. -- [1]

Right, that's why you care that it was released as GPL. Other than to verify that it was legally released as GPL, why would you be concerned with the identity of the copyright owner?

licensees don't own the code they license.

I think the question was less,

  Isn't this in the public domain (b/c it's GPL'd)?

and more along the lines of,

  Why does the owner matter since it's GPL licensed
  (and can therefore be forked, and used even if
  the new owner changes the license)?

That's correct, I should have worded it more explicitly.

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