license suggestions?

Chris Watson chris at voodooland.net
Mon Jul 9 09:31:33 EDT 2001


> Wrong.  The right to create derivative works does not include the right
> to change the license.  Note that I am not a lawyer, and this is based on
> my layman's understanding of contract law, but this has been brought up
> so many times I looked into it.

You need to discuss this with a lawyer.

> The BSDL doesn't *have* to mention that "further restrictions are
> prohibited"
> since that is the default.

Yes it does. The license itself says nothing about not adding furhter
restrictions. It's common knowledge you CAN GPL BSD code.

>
> Mr. G's app IS under the GPL, but the components (individual source files
> no doubt) written by Mr. W will still have the BSDL license at the top
> (unless Mr. G has violated the law, which of course is always possible
> regardless of license).  For Mr. K to avoid GPL "contamination" he would
> have to carefully extract only the BSDL parts *or* go back to the original
> software distribution from Mr. W.

Yes you will have a the original 2 clauses of the bsdl + the entire GPL
ammended to it. Creating a GPL work.

> The GPL states how the creator of derivative works must behave.  If the
> creator of the derivative work cannot obey both the GPL and the law at the
> same time, the law takes precedence always.

> The main reason you hate it seems to be that you have seriously
> overestimated
> the power that the license gives to others.  No matter what I or anyone else
> wants to do, without your approval I can't change the license of your code.

No, you simply either haven't read the GPL in its entire form, or you
don't understand it, or you have never consulted a lawyer about it, or
your simply ignoring the truth. When you take a copy of a 2 clause BSDL'ed
piece of code, change a few lines of it and and add that NEW piece of code
into a GPL work the whole work is GPL'ed. It ceased to be MY work the
second you modified it. It is now an entirely new entity. The parts that
are mine are still covered under the BSDL which doesnt prevent you from
gpl'ing it, but the work as a whole is now GPL if you licensed the new
derivative work under the GPL.

> In the aggregate with GPL code, the aggregate must be distributed as if the
> GPL covered the whole thing, but that aggregation still doesn't change the
> license of non-GPL code in "the mix."  Further, if the license of the non-
> GPL code is GPL-incompatible you simply can't legally distribute the
> aggregation at all.

Your talking in circles now. Your admitting you can GPL bsd code. "The
aggregate *must be* distributed as if the the GPL covered the whole
thing." You are correct. The BSDL does NOT prevent someone from GPL'ing
the code. It says nothing in the license at all about further
restrictions, ammending the license etc.. It simply says 2 things, and 2
things only, if you build a binary of it you must include the (c) and this
list of conditions. If you modify the src and release it you must include
the (c) and this list of conditions. That is the only thing it says. No
where there does it say "you may not relicense this work, add to this
license, modify it, etc.."

Chris






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