Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2005 04:47:45 -0400 From: Chuck Swiger <cswiger@mac.com> To: Josh Ockert <torstenvl@gmail.com> Cc: Danny Pansters <danny@ricin.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [FYI] QT4 licensing looks very bad for *BSD Message-ID: <42C50331.5060609@mac.com> In-Reply-To: <126eac480506301944461b1201@mail.gmail.com> References: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNCEOFFBAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> <42C42300.3020504@mac.com> <200507010413.48881.danny@ricin.com> <126eac480506301944461b1201@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Josh Ockert wrote: > I'm not so sure you guys have this right. > > No BSD-licensed code is allowed to use a GPL library and remain > BSD-licensed. According to the GPL, Section 2: > > "b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in > whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part > thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties > under the terms of this License." The derivative work as a whole must be released under the terms of the GPL because of this. The parts of the derivative work which originally were under that other license remain available under that other license alone, just as the parts which originally were under the GPL remain available under the GPL, alone. Nothing in the GPL forces the other code by itself to be under the GPL. How could that possibly be the case? [1] Many simple permissive licenses are GPL-miscable, including the BSDL and MIT/X11 licenses. See: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#GPLCompatibleLicenses You can even link GPL'ed code with proprietary code, but the result cannot be redistributed per GPL #7. Such a combination can still be used by you as an individual, because GPL #0 states: "The act of running the Program is not restricted...." -- -Chuck [1]: You can choose to use any license you want for original code that you've written. Software licenses apply to the code which is under that license, and to derivative works (assuming the license permits such to be created); conversely, a license does not apply to code which is not under that license. Unless you are the author, or unless the author grants permission for you to relicense the original source code, you do not have the right to take BSD-licensed code and put it under the GPL just because you feel like doing so, or just because you've linked the original program against (eg) GNU readline.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?42C50331.5060609>