On Fri, 01 Apr 2005 20:39:49 +0200, Ralph Giles <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Fri, Apr 01, 2005 at 08:35:15PM +0200, Tijl Houtbeckers wrote:
The GPL license prohibits any restrictions other than those of the GPL license itself.
Off topic, but I've always been confused why the advertising clause was considered an unacceptable restriction, while the MIT/BSD requirement to reproduce the license itself was not. Can someone clarify the distinction?
The MIT and "new" BSD license have terms and conditions that are compatible with the GPL. You are allowed to do the same things with the code as with the GPL (the GPL is just MORE restrictive about it). Something written under the "new" BSD or MIT license will never become GPL code (unless the copyright holder agrees to that). However, they allow any modifications to the source to be under a different license.
The fact that MIT and BSD require the inclusion of their license for *their part* of the source (not of modifications to it!) is not disallowed, because none of those restrictions go against the GPL restrictions. The ONLY restrictions in the MIT and BSD license are the copyright notice, the no warranty disclaimer, both which the GPL license encourages you or even requires you to include. Except the final restriction is that you should reproduce these restrictions, but since all of those restrictions are GPL compatible.. you're allowed to include them.
The "old" BSD license, and the OpenSSL make conditions on what you can do with the source, including changes, deratives, etc. of it. (you have to mention it when advertising (distribtion), you have to put some stuff somewhere in your source that displays you use their work). These restriction are not compatible with the GPL since the GPL requires you may not put any restrictions on GPLed code other than those in the GPL itself, or that you even link with code which is places restrictions on code that are not compatible with GPL restrictions.
in response to Jonathan, this is one of the reasons there is a "new" BSD license. The old one was not compatible with the GPL. The GPL *IS* written to deny people credit for their work. By that I mean, it is written specially so that I can take your GPL work, and use it, without ever having to credit you. Of course I'm allowed to credit you if I want, but the "freedom" concept behind the GPL is that the code is not "free" (and thus not GPL compatible) if you can REQUIRE that I must credit you. Which is exactly what the OpenSLL and "old" BSD license does. (Note that if I distribute GPL derived software I must also make the source available, which MUST include your copyright notice, and I MUST document the changes I made; in other words, what's yours and what's mine).
To summerize, if you want your code to be useable with GPL code, you can put any type of restrictions on your code, including that they should be reproduced as long as:
- These restrictions only apply to the orignal source, not any changed made to it.
- These restrictions do not go against the requirments of licensing and distrubtion in the GPL. (the GPL can be stricter than your requirments, but you can not be stricter than the GPL requirments)
As a final note: the "new" BSD license sometimes places 1 additional requirment on the use of the source, relating to the naming of the software and use of the authors name. This is a grey area to me. I suspect this is not a problem because the fact that the GPL could never require you to license a trademark or your own name along with your software, nor does it explictly try to. For example, look at the Jabber trademark..
As some as you might have guessed already, IANAL... _______________________________________________ jdev mailing list [email protected] http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/jdev
