Bruce Perens <br...@perens.com> writes: >Karl, Robin means that the work is dedicated to FSF and placed under a >BSD or MIT license. These are compatible with the GPL and FSF is fine >with it.
Er, yes. (Was there something I said that contradicted that?) -K >On 4/17/2013 10:04 AM, Karl Fogel wrote: >> Robin Winning <robin.winn...@cyaninc.com> writes: >>> I am a contracts manager at software company, and in addition to doing >>> contracts, I now find myself reviewing the licenses associated with >>> the open source packages my company has acquired. I have become quite >>> familiar with the GPL/LGPL/AGPL suite of licenses, as well as the >>> other, permissive licenses: MIT, BSD, etc. Here's my question: quite >>> frequently, the programmer makes the Free Software Foundation the >>> copyright holder, but then attaches a license that is not in the GPL >>> family. Is that a valid combination? >> It's technically valid, in that the FSF (as a non-profit corporation) >> can hold copyrightable assets under any licenses it wants. >> >> But it's likely usually a mistake, in the sense that the FSF probably >> has no idea these works are being "donated" to it under these non-GPL >> licenses, and because there is usually no need to make the FSF the >> copyright holder -- except in certain cases where the FSF is actually >> involved in the development or maintenance of the software, in which >> case they would have discussed this with the programmer and, in most >> cases, the FSF would have insisted on one of the GPL family of licenses >> (though there are some exceptions to that). >> >> I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. There are plenty of >> people who can give you real legal advice if you need; we may be able to >> help you find those people. >> >>> In the case of "ncurses," I was able to research and determine that >>> when they assigned their copyright to the Free Software Foundation, >>> the FSF gave ncurses a special carve-out allowing them to use a >>> permissive license. However, all the rest of the open source packages >>> I have come across that assert "Copyright Free Software Foundation" >>> but are accompanied by non-GPL licenses do not seem to have that sort >>> of special arrangement. >> Nice researching (re ncurses)! >> >>> Maybe I'm overthinking this, but it seems contradictory to me, and I >>> don't know how to characterize the license in terms of permissive or >>> restrictive. >> It's not contradictory, but it's probably often a mistake by a >> programmer who thinks that putting a license's terms on some software >> implies that the software's copyright must now be held by whatever >> entity wrote that license -- which, of course, is not the case and not >> the norm. >> >> -Karl >> _______________________________________________ >> License-discuss mailing list >> License-discuss@opensource.org >> http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@opensource.org http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss