this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
413 points (97.9% liked)

Linux

48052 readers
900 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] nialv7 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

IANAL, but I think the general answer is no. When someone contribute code to an open source project, although they aren't giving up their copyright, they do grant the recipient (and the rest of the world, for that matter) a license to use their code. In case of Linux, this is the GNU Public License. Unless GPL has a section about license revocation that I am not aware of, you won't be able to take your code back.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 2 weeks ago

So I think good luck for foss movement. Hopefully, forking that project won't be illegal because otherwise foss will die