Comment Giving up control (Score 1) 835
So, yeah, the copyright holder retains full control, just so long as what that copyright holder wants is for the whole world to have free access to the source code of his or her work and is free to do whatever they wish with it.
I think you may be missing one important point. The author of the code is the only person in the world *not* bound by the GPL. That is, she can distribute the binaries without giving out source code, and she can sell people the right to distribute binaries and derivative works without having to give out the source code.
Let's say company A wants to extend some open-source project, intending to make a proprietary distribution which they plan to sell. Perhaps they see the popularity of the open-source version, but also see some major improvements for which there may be a market. Company A may be willing to pay the author for the rights to distribute the code under some license other than the GPL. In this case, it was the author's decision to GPL the code which led to it's widespread popularity, and then to the money making opportunity for the author.
IANAL, and I would be quick to concede that this scenario is probably rare. The point is tough, the author's copyright on the work is not worthless once the work is GPL'd.
I think you may be missing one important point. The author of the code is the only person in the world *not* bound by the GPL. That is, she can distribute the binaries without giving out source code, and she can sell people the right to distribute binaries and derivative works without having to give out the source code.
Let's say company A wants to extend some open-source project, intending to make a proprietary distribution which they plan to sell. Perhaps they see the popularity of the open-source version, but also see some major improvements for which there may be a market. Company A may be willing to pay the author for the rights to distribute the code under some license other than the GPL. In this case, it was the author's decision to GPL the code which led to it's widespread popularity, and then to the money making opportunity for the author.
IANAL, and I would be quick to concede that this scenario is probably rare. The point is tough, the author's copyright on the work is not worthless once the work is GPL'd.