Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 15:17:24 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Ian Pulsford <ianjp@optusnet.com.au>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Abuses of the BSD license? Message-ID: <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>
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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?
> The cleanest solution, it seems to me, would be to ship the pristine
> BSD sources separately and make it clear, "*This* is what the BSD
> licence applies to." But nobody does that, and it would be
> inconvenient for embedded system developers in particular (it would
> negate one usual argument for using BSD rather than Linux there). I
> can't think of any other meaningful solutions; and I can't think of
> any argument for saying that you can ship modified binaries under a
> new licence, and not include the BSD licence in any form.
You have to include the BSD license. The difference it that
the BSD license doesn't grant unnatural rights to the eventual
recipieints for derivative works: it applies only to the code
that is BSD licensed, and not any code you add to it.
> 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.
And the GPL requirement is that the code be licensed under the
GPL.
I think the severability, if you included the BSL license there,
fails to comply with the GPL's requirement that the code be
licensed under the GPL.
-- Terry
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