Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

[Anders Karlsson]

* Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> [20080720 22:18]:
> Anders Karlsson wrote:
[snip]
>
>> So the part of the work that is non-GPL licensed, can stay non-GPL
>> licensed in the combined works and derivatives?
>
> I would differentiate between original and derivative (along with  
> combined work) here just to be more precise.
>
> Not only can it stay that way, it must that way for the original code.  
> Again, nooone other than the original copyright holder(s) cannot  
> arbitrarily change the license of the original code and even the  
> copyright holder cannot retroactively change it for the original code  
> (aside from providing it under different licenses in addition)
>
> For derivative works, the author creating a derivative work (that  
> includes substantial creative works justifying copyright) might choose  
> to publish it under a different license if the original license permits  
> that. If the license requires that the derivative work also fall under  
> the same license, it is generally referred to as copyleft.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft
>
> GPL was the first license which used this technique but there are  
> several others which follow a similar technique to various extends  
> including the Mozilla Public License, MPL ( and MPL derived licenses  
> such as CDDL used by OpenSolaris), IBM CPL (used for Postfix)and even  
> the Microsoft Reciprocal License (which is both free and open source)
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/licenses.mspx#Ms-RL
>
> Even if the combined code is under GPL, the original code is still under  
> whatever license it was originally licensed under and will remain that 
> way.

So works licenced under the GPL can not be used to create derivative
works if the resulting work is not also under the GPL, even if the GPL
licenced part was the substantially smaller contributor to the whole?

This may seem a silly question, but I am just trying to get this
straight in my head.

Thanks!

/Anders