Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 03:16:27 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Ian Pulsford <ianjp@optusnet.com.au> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Abuses of the BSD license? Message-ID: <3CAED90B.F4B7905@mindspring.com> References: <200204051922.06556@silver.dt1.binity.net> <3CAE7037.801FB15F@optusnet.com.au> <3CAEA028.186ED53E@optusnet.com.au>
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Ian Pulsford wrote: > It is commonly spouted in Linux forums that you take BSD licensed code > and do what you want with it including putting into your GPL project > under a GPL license. On looking closer at the "simplified" license I > don't see anywhere that it says you can freely relicense code under > another license. > (http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.html) [ ... ] > So where did the idea that you could use BSD licensed code without > regard for (retaining) the license come from? RMS claims "compatability" for certain licenses. That is, that you can stick your license on top of the code, *leaving the previous license intact*, and that's OK. I think you would have to do what USL does, and state that portions were still under the old license, but that the derivative work as a whole was under the GPL. One of the countersuit claims in the USL vs. UCB lawsuit was that USL had taken UCB licensed code, and failed to comply with the terms of the license (about 60% of SVR4 was derived, ione way or another, from UCB licensed code, at the time). Because of this, it's likely that the relicensing is legal if the notice is retained intact, but retaining the notice intact grants certain rights. So it's not clear if this meets the "must be licensed as a whole under the GPL" requirement of the GPL, or not. The GPL specifically excepts aggregation, so it can't be talking about an aggregate license when it talks about licensing the work as a whole under the GPL. As usual with these matters, it won't be decided one way or another until someone takes someone to court over the code. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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