Re: [rdesktop-devel] [Freerdp-devel] Black Duck IP Assessment of FreeRDP (fwd)

[Peter Å. <as...@ce...>]

> If I wrote a
> program or a module and released it under GPL and I am the copyright
> holder, I have the right to relicense it to anything I want. GPL code

Yes, this is correct.


> I think you should look at the FreeRDP wiki again and check out who has
> agreed to relicense his code to Apache v2 and look at the report again.

I have looked at the Wiki. If you are referring to 
http://www.freerdp.com/wiki/doku.php?id=license_change, it only contains a 
list of people who has agreed to the change. There are many people missing 
on that list. If I take the rdesktop AUTHORS list and remove the persons 
on your Wiki I get:

Alexi Volkov <al...@my...>
Erik Forsberg <for...@ce...>
GuoJunBo <guo...@ic...>
Henrik Andersson <he...@ce...> for Cendio AB
Hugo Trippaers <sp...@is...>
Jeremy Meng <voi...@gm...>
Matrox Graphics Inc.
Michael Gernoth <mi...@ze...>
Michal Mihalik <mmi...@sm...>
Peter Astrand <as...@ce...> for Cendio AB
Peter Kallden <pet...@ub...>
Pierre Ossman <os...@ce...> for Cendio AB

This list can probably be trimmed down, but as I have mentioned before, 
according to the statistics, Erik Forsberg, Pierre Ossman and me have done 
substantial work on rdesktop (many commits). Neither of us have agreed to 
the change. Even if you are able to assert that you have rewritten every 
line of code that we have implemented, it would still be difficult to 
claim that FreeRDP is not derived from our copyrighted rdesktop code. Our 
work started 2002, so work done by other developers (such as Matt, which 
has agreed to the change) since then may also be derived from our work.

Think about the numbers again. We have done 50% of the commits in the 
rdesktop project, on which FreeRDP is based. It's quite clear to me that 
FreeRDP is derived from our work to some extent, no matter how much you 
are tweaking, reorganizing, or rewriting the code.


Don't get us wrong, we are not opposed to the FreeRDP project. However, 
you cannot force a license change when are not agreeing to it. 
You will need to use GPLv2 or later.


Regards, 
---
Peter Åstrand		ThinLinc Chief Developer
Cendio AB		http://www.cendio.com
Wallenbergs gata 4
583 30 Linköping	Phone: +46-13-21 46 00