Dual licensing [Was: Re: cdrtools]
We've stepped into -legal territory now. MFT set to send messages only to -legal; please respond there only. On Sat, 08 Jul 2006, George Danchev wrote: > Well, I have the following 'and' vs. 'or' type of licensing > question. While it is clear now that Debian can not distribute a > product when some of its parts are under GPL and the rest are under > CDDL ('and'), is it fine to double-license {GPL|CDDL} the whole > product like Perl does with GPL | Artistic, so either the whole > thing is under GPL or the whole thing under CDDL as accepted by the > licensee. In short, could you double license under two incompatible > licenses ? As far as I understand it (TINLA, IANAL, YHBW, etc.) so long as there is a subset of licenses available which you can use to actually distribute the work, you ignore the licenses which you don't distribute under. It is a good practice to list the other licenses in the copyright file as a service to our users, but strictly speaking they are superfluous. [In the cases where they are not, you're not actually dual licensing the work.] Of course, you have to actually own the copyright on the parts that you are (re)licensing but that's probably obvious. ;-) Don Armstrong -- THERE IS NO GRAVITY THE WORLD SUCKS -- Vietnam War Penquin Lighter http://gallery.donarmstrong.com/clippings/vietnam_there_is_no_gravity.jpg http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dual licensing [Was: Re: cdrtools]
On Saturday 08 July 2006 08:41, Don Armstrong wrote: > We've stepped into -legal territory now. MFT set to send messages only > to -legal; please respond there only. Sure. > On Sat, 08 Jul 2006, George Danchev wrote: > > Well, I have the following 'and' vs. 'or' type of licensing > > question. While it is clear now that Debian can not distribute a > > product when some of its parts are under GPL and the rest are under > > CDDL ('and'), is it fine to double-license {GPL|CDDL} the whole > > product like Perl does with GPL | Artistic, so either the whole > > thing is under GPL or the whole thing under CDDL as accepted by the > > licensee. In short, could you double license under two incompatible > > licenses ? > > As far as I understand it (TINLA, IANAL, YHBW, etc.) so long as there > is a subset of licenses available which you can use to actually > distribute the work, you ignore the licenses which you don't > distribute under. It is a good practice to list the other licenses in > the copyright file as a service to our users, but strictly speaking > they are superfluous. [In the cases where they are not, you're not > actually dual licensing the work.] That's fine and that is what I have in my /usr/share/doc/libqt3-mt/copyright Qt 3.3 is dual licensed under the QPL and the GPL... So I see no worries to distribute CDDL and GPL dual licensed works the same way, unless somebody proves me wrong. > Of course, you have to actually own the copyright on the parts that > you are (re)licensing but that's probably obvious. ;-) Yes, it is pretty obvious. -- pub 4096R/0E4BD0AB 2003-03-18 fingerprint 1AE7 7C66 0A26 5BFF DF22 5D55 1C57 0C89 0E4B D0AB -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dual licensing [Was: Re: cdrtools]
George Danchev a écrit : On Saturday 08 July 2006 08:41, Don Armstrong wrote: We've stepped into -legal territory now. MFT set to send messages only to -legal; please respond there only. Sure. On Sat, 08 Jul 2006, George Danchev wrote: Well, I have the following 'and' vs. 'or' type of licensing question. While it is clear now that Debian can not distribute a product when some of its parts are under GPL and the rest are under CDDL ('and'), is it fine to double-license {GPL|CDDL} the whole product like Perl does with GPL | Artistic, so either the whole thing is under GPL or the whole thing under CDDL as accepted by the licensee. In short, could you double license under two incompatible licenses ? As far as I understand it (TINLA, IANAL, YHBW, etc.) so long as there is a subset of licenses available which you can use to actually distribute the work, you ignore the licenses which you don't distribute under. It is a good practice to list the other licenses in the copyright file as a service to our users, but strictly speaking they are superfluous. [In the cases where they are not, you're not actually dual licensing the work.] That's fine and that is what I have in my /usr/share/doc/libqt3-mt/copyright Qt 3.3 is dual licensed under the QPL and the GPL... So I see no worries to distribute CDDL and GPL dual licensed works the same way, unless somebody proves me wrong. Dual licensing is the best way to increase the liberty of the license. Users can choice to use the best license for them, and if all contributions are under the same dual license, the whole source code will be compatible with both license. Double licensing under two incompatible license is the only interesting practice, because they become compatible. If you choose to dual license two compatible license (LGPL/GPL; BSD/GPL), it is useless because the compatibility already exist. Sorry for my bad English. Of course, you have to actually own the copyright on the parts that you are (re)licensing but that's probably obvious. ;-) Yes, it is pretty obvious. ... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Dual licensing [Was: Re: cdrtools]
Dual licensing is certainly workable for incompatible licenses, example MYSQL using GPL and Commercial licenses