synaptics driver MIT license approach

[John Hughes]

Daniel Stone wrote:
> On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 01:05:57PM -0700, Yan Seiner wrote:
>   
>> Daniel Stone wrote:
>>     
>>> No, because that's absolutely insane.
>>>
>>> 'We tried contacting you to relicense your GPL code to BSD, but
>>> couldn't, so we just put it in our proprietary app.  Cheers!'
>>>
>>> Copyright passes to the estate if someone dies, so you can convince the
>>> executioner to do as you like.  But if you simply can't find the person,
>>> or they don't want to talk to you -- bad luck.
>>>  
>>>       
>> Not really insane; that's how real estate is handled.  If you have a 
>> piece of land where ownership cannot be determined, or where the owner 
>> has died/disappeared and cannot be located, there is a legal framework 
>> in place for clearing title for the land.  Otherwise the landscape would 
>> be dotted with parcels you couldn't anything with....
>>     
>
> Yes, but real estate is exclusive.  It's not like there's a finite
> amount of code in the world that can be written.
>   
Well, for any given code size there is a finite amount of software that 
can be written....

And we haven't yet managed to make those infinite length tapes, and as 
far as I know we never will be able to.

So, yes, there is a finite amount of software that can be written.