[U-Boot] Possible GPL violation

[Charles Manning]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Wolfgang Denk <wd at denx.de> wrote:
> Dear Charles,
>
> In message <CAE21AQoqC8_sJarKmSAa2f-3=3YDPL9gK7rxL7pXUx3aa=NinQ at mail.gmail.com> you wrote:
>>
>> 1) If you buy a product containing GPL code, but the company does not
>> supply the code, then - in general - you cannot force the company to
>> supply you with code. You need to get the collaboration of an
>> infringed copyright holder to force the issue.
>
> Just for the record: I'm always willing to help out as such.
>

One of the problems with pursuing these actions is that it can be
somewhat hard to prove that you have contributed materially to claim
copyright over some code.

There are some places where this is clear (eg. much of Wolfgang's
u-boot work) or in my case Yaffs (where I have written all the core
yaffs code).

In much of open source though, there have been many major contributors
and even more minor contributors and it can be hard to claim to be a
legitimate copyright holder. In theory, I guess you could claim
copyright on a three line patch, but the harsh reality of lawyer land
would probably want to see something far more substantial.

#disclaimer I'm not a lawyer

-- Charles