Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 00:01:14 +1000 From: Ian Pulsford <ianjp@optusnet.com.au> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Abuses of the BSD license? Message-ID: <3CAEFFAA.91525BB3@optusnet.com.au> References: <200204051922.06556@silver.dt1.binity.net> <3CAE7037.801FB15F@optusnet.com.au> <3CAEA028.186ED53E@optusnet.com.au> <3CAED90B.F4B7905@mindspring.com>
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Terry Lambert wrote: > > 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. Fortunately it is not up to Stallman what he can do with software under someone else's licence (unless that is a condition of the licence). My question is where does it say you can do that in the BSD licence(s)? Of course you can automatically use the code as it was intended, to compile, or extend it as long as the "copyright notice" is retained. Nowhere does it say that, automatically, you can put a new licence on top of that code. Remember when someone makes a piece of code it has no licence, you can't do anything with it until you have permissions from the author. > 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). Are the BSD licences in use today the same as the licences used on UCB code in the 80's? > 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. Relicensing is illegal without the creator or owner or licence's "license". The owner has copyright and gives license for others to distribute or copy or whatever. The way I understood Stallman's idea of a "compatible licence" was one that didn't interfere (via restrictions) with a piece of source code being linked or otherwise compiled with GPLed stuff. Ian To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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