I wondered the same thing: if say the Linux kernel was to be re-licensed, how long would it take to get a hold of all the developers that ever contributed something to it? I&#x27;m sure some of them have by now passed away, so they&#x27;d have to get a hold of their next of kin?<p>Also, how does duplicating someone&#x27;s patches work? If I contributed some really basic piece of code, say a very specific hash map implementation where there aren&#x27;t really two useful ways of doing it, does another developer get to copy&#x2F;paste bits of it into their code? What if they name the variables the same and structure the code similarly? What exactly distinguishes the original code and the new replacement if they look similar? The fact that someone else typed it in?