Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 10:48:01 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: Ian Pulsford <ianjp@optusnet.com.au>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Abuses of the BSD license? Message-ID: <20020407084801.GA4429@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <3CAF8204.5E93CE38@mindspring.com> References: <200204051922.06556@silver.dt1.binity.net> <3CAE7037.801FB15F@optusnet.com.au> <3CAEA028.186ED53E@optusnet.com.au> <20020406105111.A90057@lpt.ens.fr> <3CAEDDD2.2ADA819F@mindspring.com> <20020406114505.GA2576@lpt.ens.fr> <3CAEE4A1.315CF53@mindspring.com> <20020406191209.GA3203@lpt.ens.fr> <3CAF8204.5E93CE38@mindspring.com>
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Terry Lambert said on Apr 6, 2002 at 15:17:24:
> Rahul Siddharthan wrote:
> > Now, if you have to ship the BSD licence with your code:
> > For your own protection, if you're Microsoft you must make it
> > explicitly clear exactly what the BSD licence applies to -- it clearly
> > applies to something you're shipping; and surely you can't say "this
> > licence applies to some code in our ftp binary, but not to the binary
> > as a whole, and if you want to know exactly what it applies to and
> > thus take advantage of this licence, you have to go find the relevant
> > pieces of source code for yourself; we won't help you."
>
> Sure they can say that. Why couldn't they?
[snip]
> > As for re-licensing under the GPL -- you'd still be obliged to put the
> > BSD licence in there, so it would really be dual-licensing, not
> > re-licensing.
>
> Not quite. A dual license can only work if you are permitted
> to drop one ("either under the terms of A _or_ under the terms
> of _B_"). You can never drop the BSD license terms from the
> code, without an assignment of rights, or the permission of the
> authors.
So why can't the GNU people do the same thing you say Microsoft can do
-- trivially modify the source (add GNU-style long command-line
options?) or even leave it totally unmodified, include the BSD
licence, and say "the BSD licence applies to part or all of this code,
but we're not telling you what, you have to find out for yourself."
That looks, to me, like effectively dropping the BSD licence terms,
since you don't know what they apply to; sure you can find out with
some research, but you could have done that anyway, given just a BSD
copyright notice and no licence. And when redistributing, you can
just continue to bundle the BSD licence, now made meaningless by this
"we're not telling you what pieces" disclaimer.
Rahul
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