[gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Ilian Zarov]

  Hello,
 I have some questions about the header of an ebuild. 
 Should author contain program author information or name and email of 
the ebuild author ?
 How is maintainer being set ? Original ebuild author or is it assigned
to a gentoo developer ?
 And a copyrights issue - the first line of every ebuild is 
"# Copyright 1999-2002 Gentoo Technologies, Inc.", shouldn't it be
copyrighted to the ebuild author ?
 Thanks.

	Best Regards,
		Ilian Zarov

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Vitaly Kushneriuk]

On Sun, 2002-02-03 at 06:10, Ilian Zarov wrote:
>   Hello,
>  I have some questions about the header of an ebuild. 
>  Should author contain program author information or name and email of 
> the ebuild author ?
>  How is maintainer being set ? Original ebuild author or is it assigned
> to a gentoo developer ?
>  And a copyrights issue - the first line of every ebuild is 
> "# Copyright 1999-2002 Gentoo Technologies, Inc.", shouldn't it be
> copyrighted to the ebuild author ?
>  Thanks.
> 
> 	Best Regards,
> 		Ilian Zarov
> 
> _______________________________________________
> gentoo-dev mailing list
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org
> http://lists.gentoo.org/mailman/listinfo/gentoo-dev
Author field should contain ebuild-author. aintainer should
also point to te same person initialy, but it might be changed later.
As you are the one that writes ebuild, you can decide on whatever license ;)
Just don't expect it to be added to the /usr/portage if it's not GPL.
An yes, you can leave the copyright to yourself. 

	/Vitaly

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Chris Houser]

Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:              [Sun Feb  3 2002, 12:37:17AM EST]         
> An yes, you can leave the copyright to yourself. 

Acutally, I believe that we want all ebuilds in the official
/usr/portage to be GPL and Copyright by Gentoo Inc.  GPL protects the
ebuild authors from Gentoo having too much control over their work, but
the Gentoo Copyright gives us some flexibility in handling the hundreds
of files from different authors.

Do I have this wrong?

--Chouser

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Vitaly Kushneriuk]

On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 18:12, Chris Houser wrote:
> Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:              [Sun Feb  3 2002, 12:37:17AM EST]         
> > An yes, you can leave the copyright to yourself. 
> 
> Acutally, I believe that we want all ebuilds in the official
> /usr/portage to be GPL and Copyright by Gentoo Inc.  GPL protects the
> ebuild authors from Gentoo having too much control over their work, but
> the Gentoo Copyright gives us some flexibility in handling the hundreds
> of files from different authors.
> 
> Do I have this wrong?
Yes. you do have this wrong ;)
First of all, once contributions are GPL-ed , the fact that you do not
own the copyright does not prevent you from distributing/modifying etc.
So having all copyright go to Gentoo Inc. will not make your life easier
if you want to continue the open-souce path.

Second, you _can_not_ *require* contributors to give up their copyright.
People can actualy get concerned about the Gentoo feature and intentions
if you do. _If_ Gentoo Inc. will have all the copyrights, then _nothing_
will prevent it one day changing the license for all _future_ versions.
The fact that no single entity/person has all the copyright is
a Good Thing (tm).

	/Vitaly

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Daniel Robbins]

On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 10:08, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:
> > Do I have this wrong?
> Yes. you do have this wrong ;)

No, chouser was right.  I'm getting a bit worried by this trend of
Junior Gentoo Linux developers "explaining" Gentoo Linux policy when
they have no idea what said policy is.

> First of all, once contributions are GPL-ed , the fact that you do not
> own the copyright does not prevent you from distributing/modifying etc.
> So having all copyright go to Gentoo Inc. will not make your life easier
> if you want to continue the open-souce path.
> 
> Second, you _can_not_ *require* contributors to give up their copyright.
> People can actualy get concerned about the Gentoo feature and intentions
> if you do. _If_ Gentoo Inc. will have all the copyrights, then _nothing_
> will prevent it one day changing the license for all _future_ versions.
> The fact that no single entity/person has all the copyright is
> a Good Thing (tm).

All ebuilds should be Copyrighted by Gentoo Technologies, Inc. or should
generally not be put on Portage.  We may need to change the license in
the future, from:

# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 or
later

To:

# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 only

Particularly if something weird gets added to a new version of the GPL. 
If we have multiple copyright holders, doing this becomes a mess.

Best Regards,
 
-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@gentoo.org>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[mbutcher]

First of all, in the past, it _has_ been recommended that the copyright be 
ratained by the person who wrote the ebuild (It came up in January... can't 
remember what the thread title was). "Junior" contributors are likely just 
repeating what they were told were the accepted policies. 

But I'm curious to know why the copyright has to be assigned to Gentoo 
Technologies. My experience with many open source projects has been that the 
person who wrote the code retains the copyright. I don't see a compellig 
reason to give up the copyright. Why should we?

On the other hand, I see Vitaly's second point to be valid. I am sceptical 
about giving up copyright on anything I've done, as it means giving up any 
semblence of ownership, control, or future rights to that item. I mean, you 
can use it under GPL all you want, but what if I want to use portions of the 
code I wrote to include it in proprietary projects that I do under the 
auspices of my employer. Now I have to ask _you_ permission to reuse _my_ 
code.

I'm not completely opposed to assigning Gentoo my copyright, but I can't see 
any reason, from either my or your perspective, why I should _have_ to do 
that.

On Thursday 07 February 2002 12:22 pm, you wrote:
> On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 10:08, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:
> > > Do I have this wrong?
> >
> > Yes. you do have this wrong ;)
>
> No, chouser was right.  I'm getting a bit worried by this trend of
> Junior Gentoo Linux developers "explaining" Gentoo Linux policy when
> they have no idea what said policy is.
>
> > First of all, once contributions are GPL-ed , the fact that you do not
> > own the copyright does not prevent you from distributing/modifying etc.
> > So having all copyright go to Gentoo Inc. will not make your life easier
> > if you want to continue the open-souce path.
> >
> > Second, you _can_not_ *require* contributors to give up their copyright.
> > People can actualy get concerned about the Gentoo feature and intentions
> > if you do. _If_ Gentoo Inc. will have all the copyrights, then _nothing_
> > will prevent it one day changing the license for all _future_ versions.
> > The fact that no single entity/person has all the copyright is
> > a Good Thing (tm).
>
> All ebuilds should be Copyrighted by Gentoo Technologies, Inc. or should
> generally not be put on Portage.  We may need to change the license in
> the future, from:
>
> # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 or
> later
>
> To:
>
> # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 only
>
> Particularly if something weird gets added to a new version of the GPL.
> If we have multiple copyright holders, doing this becomes a mess.
>
> Best Regards,

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[mbutcher]

On Thursday 07 February 2002 01:48 pm, you wrote:
> Since ebuilds
> used to be created by a tight-knit team, this used to be a non-issue.
> Now many people are contributing ebuilds, so it looks like we should
> change our policy.

Ah, yes... the problems of becomming popular! That's what you get, Mr. 
Robbins (et al), for putting together such a cool product. ;-)

> Karltk on irc suggested that we:
>
> 1) Require all ebuilds submitted to us to be released under the GPL
> 2) State that any ebuilds without a Copyright line will be assigned to
> Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
> 3) Allow contributors to keep their copyright on the ebuilds they submit
>
> We then need to figure out how to address the issue of contributed
> ebuilds being derivatives of existing ebuilds that are Copyright someone
> else!  Must we list all the copyright holders at the top of every
> ebuild?  It gets confusing (to me at least).
>
> Obviously, we need to add something like this to gentoo.org, along with
> a revised version of the Debian Social Contract.  But as of right now,
> any new policy regarding Copyright hasn't been finalized yet.  I'm still
> learning about it and it's still being discussed.
>
> I guess these issues are a 'good thing' and a result that Gentoo Linux
> and the developer/user community is growing and maturing.

Sound reasoning. I like it. 

Not sure how to handle that case of extending or updating existing ebuilds. 
By the letter of the law, you can probably change the code, remove the 
original copyright, and replace it with your own, so long as it's under GPL. 
However, I would say that the best thing to do (etiquette wise) is to cite 
all previous authors, e.g.

Copyright (c) M Butcher, based on the orginal script by D Robbins

Or something like that. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Vitaly Kushneriuk]

mbutcher wrote:
> I'm not completely opposed to assigning Gentoo my copyright, but I can't see 
> any reason, from either my or your perspective, why I should _have_ to do 
> that.
Same here.

drobbins: 
> > No, chouser was right.  I'm getting a bit worried by this trend of
> > Junior Gentoo Linux developers "explaining" Gentoo Linux policy when
> > they have no idea what said policy is.

This was _not_ my attempt to explain Gentoo policy, but rather my
personal opinion on the subject. I'd say exactly the same if I was not
a part of the Gentoo team. This is just my view of the ways of
open-source. Personaly I will _not_ contribute to a project that one day
can go closed-source(or public domain, which is the same ;). 
And this is what distributed copyright prevents very good.
And if you'll check headers of ebuilds that I made, you'll seee
(c) vitaly@gentoo.org ;)

> > All ebuilds should be Copyrighted by Gentoo Technologies, Inc. or should
> > generally not be put on Portage.  

It sounds, _at least_ suspicious.

> > We may need to change the license in
> > the future, from:
> >
> > # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 or
> > later
> >
> > To:
> >
> > # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 only
you can change it right now in skel.ebuilds so that future contributions
will have it _by_default_. Still if author wants to change it, he's in
his right to do so.
Again, check my ebuilds, you'll see GPL v2. No "or later". I just do not
trust RMS. Why should I trust Gentoo?
> >
> > Particularly if something weird gets added to a new version of the GPL.
> > If we have multiple copyright holders, doing this becomes a mess.
If you that concerned (and you should imo) why did you release it with
"or later" stuff in the first place? And why don't you change it now?
GPL is out there for long time, and v2. should be enough.


Regards,
	/Vitaly.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Daniel Robbins]

On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 12:46, mbutcher wrote:
> First of all, in the past, it _has_ been recommended that the copyright be 
> ratained by the person who wrote the ebuild (It came up in January... can't 
> remember what the thread title was). "Junior" contributors are likely just 
> repeating what they were told were the accepted policies. 
> But I'm curious to know why the copyright has to be assigned to Gentoo 
> Technologies. My experience with many open source projects has been that the 
> person who wrote the code retains the copyright. I don't see a compellig 
> reason to give up the copyright. Why should we?

I guess that there is no real reason to give up the Copyright.  It's one
of those situations where we've "done it that way" since the inception
of the project, so it's our policy by default until changed.  It does
allow me to tweak the GPL part of the license to be "v2 only", which has
been something that I've been meaning to do for a while since I like the
GPL but don't automatically trust future GPL licenses.  Since ebuilds
used to be created by a tight-knit team, this used to be a non-issue. 
Now many people are contributing ebuilds, so it looks like we should
change our policy.  It looks like we've gotten to the point where we
need a Debian-style "Social Contract" and all the trappings that come
along with that.  Growing pains.

My concern is that when someone with a "@gentoo.org" address posts
something to this list, many people read the email as if it is our
official policy when it isn't, particularly if statements are presented
as fact.  All our developers have been keeping the ebuilds we work on
"Copyright Gentoo Technologies Inc." since the beginning, and nearly all
ebuilds have been submitted this way.  This policy hasn't changed. 
Maybe it should, but it hasn't yet.  If things like this need to be
addressed, I would appreciate it if our "@gentoo.org" developers would
take the time to discuss the issue with me first before posting it
here.  Some of our developers do this, others don't.  I just don't want
misinformation to be spread.  I'm a busy guy too, and sometimes we don't
have an official policy on something because I haven't actually sat down
and had time to think about it and discuss it with others yet.  Not all
of us stay up nights to think about copyright issues.  This doesn't
necessarily mean that we have malevolent intentions.

> On the other hand, I see Vitaly's second point to be valid. I am sceptical 
> about giving up copyright on anything I've done, as it means giving up any 
> semblence of ownership, control, or future rights to that item. I mean, you 
> can use it under GPL all you want, but what if I want to use portions of the 
> code I wrote to include it in proprietary projects that I do under the 
> auspices of my employer. Now I have to ask _you_ permission to reuse _my_ 
> code.
> 
> I'm not completely opposed to assigning Gentoo my copyright, but I can't see 
> any reason, from either my or your perspective, why I should _have_ to do 
> that.

Karltk on irc suggested that we:

1) Require all ebuilds submitted to us to be released under the GPL
2) State that any ebuilds without a Copyright line will be assigned to
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.
3) Allow contributors to keep their copyright on the ebuilds they submit

We then need to figure out how to address the issue of contributed
ebuilds being derivatives of existing ebuilds that are Copyright someone
else!  Must we list all the copyright holders at the top of every
ebuild?  It gets confusing (to me at least).

Obviously, we need to add something like this to gentoo.org, along with
a revised version of the Debian Social Contract.  But as of right now,
any new policy regarding Copyright hasn't been finalized yet.  I'm still
learning about it and it's still being discussed.

I guess these issues are a 'good thing' and a result that Gentoo Linux
and the developer/user community is growing and maturing. 

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@gentoo.org>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Daniel Robbins]

On Thu, 2002-02-07 at 13:44, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:
> > > All ebuilds should be Copyrighted by Gentoo Technologies, Inc. or should
> > > generally not be put on Portage.  
> It sounds, _at least_ suspicious.

Maybe if you asked me about about my reasoning first it wouldn't have
seemed so suspicious.

> > > Particularly if something weird gets added to a new version of the GPL.
> > > If we have multiple copyright holders, doing this becomes a mess.
> If you that concerned (and you should imo) why did you release it with
> "or later" stuff in the first place? And why don't you change it now?
> GPL is out there for long time, and v2. should be enough.

Why haven't removed "or later"?  Due to being extremely busy and
distracted by other things.  Vitaly, I really don't appreciate the fact
that you call my actions "suspicious" and question my motives.  If you
have any concern about this, why not talk to me personally before
posting something to a public list that implies that I can't be
trusted?  Particularly since this issue is so sensitive to so many?  

I'm not demanding that people trust me at face value, but at the same
time I would also ask that people (*particularly* new developers!) try
to have at least an ounce of concern for this project.  It doesn't take
a rocket scientist to realize that a developer email stating that our
existing ad hoc policy is "_at least_ suspicious" can be damaging to
future Gentoo Linux development.  Just last week we had a developer (now
on "probation") attack someone on this list because they used MS Outlook
to compose their email!  I *really* don't want to see fear mongering and
personal attacks on this list, *especially* coming from Gentoo Linux
developers.

Best Regards,

-- 
Daniel Robbins                                  <drobbins@gentoo.org>
Chief Architect/President                       http://www.gentoo.org 
Gentoo Technologies, Inc.

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Kenneth Vestergaard Schmidt]

On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 10:44:23PM +0200, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:
> > > No, chouser was right.  I'm getting a bit worried by this trend of
> > > Junior Gentoo Linux developers "explaining" Gentoo Linux policy when
> > > they have no idea what said policy is.
> 
> This was _not_ my attempt to explain Gentoo policy, but rather my
> personal opinion on the subject. I'd say exactly the same if I was not
> a part of the Gentoo team. This is just my view of the ways of
> open-source. Personaly I will _not_ contribute to a project that one day
> can go closed-source(or public domain, which is the same ;). 
> And this is what distributed copyright prevents very good.
> And if you'll check headers of ebuilds that I made, you'll seee
> (c) vitaly@gentoo.org ;)

What _real_ difference does it make? The only difference is that
Gentoo Technologies, Inc. can't relicense it and make a closed-source
version. However, if it was possible for them, and if they did, everybody
could just ignore them and continue working on the last version released
under the GPL.

> > > All ebuilds should be Copyrighted by Gentoo Technologies, Inc. or should
> > > generally not be put on Portage.  
> 
> It sounds, _at least_ suspicious.

If you don't trust Gentoo Technologies, Inc. which is (AFAIK) controlled by
Daniel Robbins, how can you contribute to this project? I mean, FSF requires
that you assign copyright to them if you want to contribute to their projects,
simply because of management-issues, and because it makes it easier for them
to help out in case of lawsuits and the likes.

> > > # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 only
> you can change it right now in skel.ebuilds so that future contributions
> will have it _by_default_. Still if author wants to change it, he's in
> his right to do so.
> Again, check my ebuilds, you'll see GPL v2. No "or later". I just do not
> trust RMS. Why should I trust Gentoo?

Personally, I think that if you want to become an active contributor to a
project, you at least have to know what their mission is and what they stand
for. If you don't trust Gentoo enough to assign copyright to them, I don't
think you've understood their mission well enough. I am not claiming to know
it myself, I just think that active contribution should mean at least a
basic knowledge of the overall goal.

As a side-remark, this is one of the requirements of the Debian New Maintainer
process. You have to demonstrate adequate abilities to be an asset, but also
demonstrate that you know the difference between 'free' software and 'libre'
software, and that you are aware of their overall goals and purpose. Since
I am not (yet ;-)) an active contributor to Gentoo, I am not aware of the
process for becoming an official developer, but I can heartily recommend a
process akin to this. One of our latest additions is that in order to become
a Debian Developer you need to get a package "sponsored", meaning that you
make a package suitable for inclusion in the main Debian archive, and the
sponsor checks the package for errors, and then uploads it into the archive.
If the package is good, this demonstrates adequate skills.

Enough rambling from me. A last comment: what's be big fuss about. Aren't we
primarily talking about .ebuilds? I fail to see the great use for retaining
the copyright. I mean, it's not like /my/ next job depends on me having to
use proprietary ebuilds ;-)

--
Kenneth Vestergaard Schmidt
kvs@binarysolutions.dk			charon@debian.org

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Vitaly Kushneriuk]

> What _real_ difference does it make? The only difference is that
> Gentoo Technologies, Inc. can't relicense it and make a closed-source
> version. However, if it was possible for them, and if they did, everybody
> could just ignore them and continue working on the last version released
> under the GPL.
The point is not that you can't fork the project. You'r right at that
you always can, if it's licensed under GPL. The point is preserving
the future "free" status of _all_ derivative works as well. If you don't
care about that, you can just put all the work in "public domain".

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Kenneth Vestergaard Schmidt]

On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 08:26:37AM +0200, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:
> > What _real_ difference does it make? The only difference is that
> > Gentoo Technologies, Inc. can't relicense it and make a closed-source
> > version. However, if it was possible for them, and if they did, everybody
> > could just ignore them and continue working on the last version released
> > under the GPL.
> The point is not that you can't fork the project. You'r right at that
> you always can, if it's licensed under GPL. The point is preserving
> the future "free" status of _all_ derivative works as well. If you don't
> care about that, you can just put all the work in "public domain".

But all of a sudden I have to trust you? You won't trust Gentoo, why should
anybody want to trust eachother then? If people keep the copyright to them-
selves, it would mean that small pieces of Gentoo could fall into proprie-
tary status. If the majority of people are so paranoid that they won't trust
Gentoo Technologies, Inc. with a few ebuilds, the only solution would be to
make a "Gentoo Social Contract" or some sorts, where it would be guaranteed
that Gentoo will always be Free Software. But if you can't make the leap of
faith and trust Daniel Robbins when he says Gentoo will always be Free, why
would you trust such a document?

Anyway, once I get around to contributing to this fine project, I won't have
any problem assigning my copyright to Gentoo. It's the least I can do in
return for getting such a nice distribution.

--
Best Regards
Kenneth Vestergaard Schmidt

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Bob Phan]

On 8 Feb 2002, Vitaly Kushneriuk wrote:

> > But all of a sudden I have to trust you? You won't trust Gentoo, why should
> > anybody want to trust eachother then? If people keep the copyright to them-
> > selves, it would mean that small pieces of Gentoo could fall into proprie-
> > tary status. 
> No. The whole point is that once no one is holding _all_ the copyrights
> you don't have to worry. You don't have to trust me. 
> If I want I _can_ use the code _I_ wrote in propriatry product. 

By "code" you _are_ referring to ebuilds, correct?  They are shell scripts
that are for all intents and purposes useless to anything other than
portage anyway.  Most of it is "derived" from the README file in the
original tarball anyway.  Personally, I'll copywrite all my ebuilds to
gentoo out of sheer apathy.  Countless hours of work and a decent
distro to boot should be plenty to base "trust" off of.  If you don't want
to, that's fine, but your reasoning is flawed, and the message you send to
others is unnecessary.  I've been more swayed by the pragmatic approaches
of the Open Source movement.  By working together in an open way you, end
up with a better quality product.  In other words, let it be and just
enjoy the ride.

 /*
 * Bob Phan <bob@evil-core.com,rphan@nrgn.com>
 * Computational Chemistry Informatics
 * Neurogen Corporation
 * (203)488-8201 x4645
 *
 * To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
 */

RE: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Sean Mitchell]

Kenneth Vestergaard Schmidt [mailto:charon@binarysolutions.dk] wrote:

[snip]

> Anyway, once I get around to contributing to this fine project, I won't 
> have any problem assigning my copyright to Gentoo. It's the least I can 
> do in return for getting such a nice distribution.

That's my take on it too. 

Sean

Re: [gentoo-dev] Ebuild info: author, maintainer and copyrights

[Vitaly Kushneriuk]

> But all of a sudden I have to trust you? You won't trust Gentoo, why should
> anybody want to trust eachother then? If people keep the copyright to them-
> selves, it would mean that small pieces of Gentoo could fall into proprie-
> tary status. 
No. The whole point is that once no one is holding _all_ the copyrights
you don't have to worry. You don't have to trust me. 
If I want I _can_ use the code _I_ wrote in propriatry product. 
I can't do this to something _you_ wrote. And no matter what I do with
_my_ code that was released, you can still use it too, just you are
bound  by GPL to what you can do with it. So even if _all_ the 
copyrights  were in one hands, no one can take the project from the
public. 
It _is_ possible is this case to make some propriatry
version of it tho.

For example, noone is holding a copyrights for the _whole_ Linux kernel.
There's no copyright requirenments in sending a patch to it. 
The fact that Linux is GPL, ensures that all exhancements and bugfixes
are GPL too. IF for example, a company writes driver for Linux, they
still can release _their_ Windows driver that shares some of the code
with the Linux version with a different license. As long as the Linux
version is GPL-ed I don't care. It's _their_ work.

And it's not that I do not trust Daniel. The point is that I don't 
like to be _required_ to. The whole open-source community does not have
a single copyright holder. _Some_ of the code is (c) FSF. But GNU
contributors adviced do to that coz FSF has an ability to better
represent it in court etc. But there's much more code that is
copyrighted _mostly_ to the original author. Most of the software
that you'r using on you Linux system has as you call it "propriatry
status". You don't care much about it don't you?
Again, if he(the author)
accepted patches to his code, he does not hold copyrights to the patches
So if he wants to make the code propriatry he'll have to rewrite all
that was contributed, without "deriving" from the contributed code.
That's something that is doable , but for a project that has a lot of
contributors, it's very hard, or even impossible to do. 
But I'm ok with it if he does, after all that's his programm in the
first place, and I didn't pay him to do it for me.
In such case, I will be able to continue to develop the project myself,
it's GPL. 
 
	/Vitaly.