Comment by codetrotter
7 years ago
IANAL but I don’t think this is true.
A person or company that violated the GPL would void the permission granted to them by violating the license and would be liable for having done so. But it would take a court ruling to decide what that means for the parties involved.
For example, the court might give the violating party the choice to either release source, OR to keep the source closed but to financially compensate the copyright holder(s) of the code that they violated the license for. For example. Another possible outcome could be that they could say that the violating party is given the choice between releasing the source OR recall the product and financially compensate the copyright holder(s) of the code that they violated the license for.
Like I said though, IANAL.
So there's two options, either the software is released GPL or they have no right to use the source and it's in violation and has to be resolved?
Either they distribute the source code under a license compatible with the GPL (not necessarily the GPL itself), OR they are committing copyright infringement and must,
- negotiate a license,
- pay damages,
- some other remedy, OR
- nothing at all, if nobody with standing (meaning an author of decides to sue.
This last option is by far the most likely.
I don't get how anything "has to be resolved". The most likely outcome from this is "nothing changes from yesterday".
In practice, letting things run their own course ("nothing changes") one of the methods of resolving the issue, indeed.