[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
In the GNU Project we are not supporters of "open source". We develop free software so as to liberate users from nonfree (user-subjugating) software. Thus, we give the long-term goal of defeating nonfree software priority over short-term success. For some issues, that difference in goals and values has no effect. For other issues, it changes everything. > According to our understanding it s allowed for GPLv2 licensed > application s to use MIT and/or BSD code as long as it s > dynamically loaded. There are some vaguenesses in that statement, as a result of which it is neither true nor false. * There are two different BSD licenses. The original BSD license is incompatible with all GPL versions. The modified BSD license is compatible with all GPL versions. See http://gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html. * There are two different licenses that some people call "MIT", but that term is a misnomer (http://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html). Fortunately, both of them are compatible with all GPL versions. * It is a mistake to assume that dynamic linking makes the issue go away. Dynamic linking can violate the GPL too. Therefore: Any GPL-covered program can be linked, statically or dynamically, with code under the X11 license, the Expat license or the revised BSD license, because these are GPL-compatible licenses. However, linking (or otherwise combining) GPL-covered code with code under the original BSD license can violate the GPL, because that license is GPL-incompatible. The end user can link GPL-covered code with anything, because the GPL doesn't impose any conditions on what the end user does privately. However, distributing packages designed to dynamically combine GPL-covered code with code under a GPL-incompatible license may violate the GPL. These statements apply to all GPL versions. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.
