On Tue, 1 Feb 2000, Rafael Laboissiere wrote: > Do I have really to relicense the whole even if the original code have had > nothing to do in the past with my Readline additions? One could ponder that > only _my_ part of the work is based on Readline. I will really appreciate > if someone could confirm/second Santiago's point here: am I not allowed to > just release _my_ modifications under the GPL, leaving the rest in the > public domain? Could someone please point to me the relevant part of GPL > that states that?
The original work, sans readline support, will remain in the PD. You can distribute it by itself, as PD. The version with readline support is a derivative work of the readline library, and thus is no longer in the PD (the authors of readline have a copyright interest in it). Thus, that version must be released under the GPL. I don't know if you're laboring under the common misconception that a work (and all variants) must be uniformly licensed. You don't have to "relicense" anything here. Releasing a version under GPL has zero effect on other released versions (or even the same version distributed to someone else). There should be a FAQ for these things. Lynn