Re: [Qemu-devel] GPLv3 troubles

[Peter Maydell]

On 18 October 2011 16:56, Anthony Liguori <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 10/18/2011 10:19 AM, Peter Maydell wrote:
>> which (apart from having a typo) only lists the people who were
>> the git commit authors. This isn't the same as everybody who might
>> have copyright on the change. There are certainly commits in the
>> omap support which have gone through several people (listed in
>> the Signed-off-by: lines) who all have copyright-authorship even
>> if they're not git-commit-authors.
>
> Sure, but the Author shouldn't Signed-off-by on a copyright change if there
> are other copyright owners that also need to approve.  SoB is stating that
> you are entitled to submit the patch which in case of copyright change means
> you own the copyright or got permission from the copyright owner.

Yes, you need "permission from the copyright owner", but that
only amounts to "permission from the copyright owner to submit
under this license", not "permission to relicense the code as
you feel like later". (cf clause (b) of the "Developer's Certificate
of Origin".)

That document also says later that you can modify the change as
you pass it up providing you add your signed-off-by too, so the
whole set of people who signed-off-by some patch are potentially
copyright-authors, which was my original point.

-- PMM