[Bf-committers] extension clause

[Matt Henley]

I agree that company lawyers tend to be paranoid.  I deal with that
frequently in oil/gas equipment manufacturing.


> Imagine the fear that making just one false step and you could be legally
> forced to open-source your top secret proprietary project.
>

Has anyone here ever heard of a single case where a company has been forced
to opensource their code due to the gpl?  Every case that I have ever seen,
the "guilty" party was given a choice:

1.  Do what is necessary to comply with the license (ie properly distribute
the code as per the gpl or replace the gpl'd code with code under
a compatible license)
2.  Stop distributing the software

If someone  in the company or party to internal distribution leaks the
software, they, not the company have committed copyright infringement for
the gpl'd code as well as the proprietary software.  Any person who further
distributes the software is also guilty.

One question that I have... based on the agreement between the Blender
Foundation and NaN for the release of Blender that we all raised money for,
would it even be possible to relicense Blender code from that era without
running into breach of contract issues?

Matt