On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Simon Urbanek <simon.urbanek@r-project.org
> wrote:

> No, you give rights (to modify and redistribute) via the license to
> everybody, but not the copyright. As a copyright holder you can do anything
> with your original code (re-license it, use commercially etc.) but anyone
> else can only do what you specified in the license (so e.g. they cannot
> release it under a different, incompatible license - let's say BSD).
>

Can only do what "you" specified? Consider this hypothetical scenario. A
package is taken over and all copyrights are
retained as required by GPL. Now new files are added that provide a
different implementation of basically the same ideas.
Eventually all of the original files (containing the orignial author's
copyright notice) are replaced and removed. The
original author (that is, "you") is now out of the picture.

This raises the question of where copyright notices should go. It also
highlights the important legal distinction between
copyright and patent law: copyright (and copyleft) does not protect ideas
and algorithms. Only patents do this (according
to a lawyer friend).

>
>

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