Licenses again...
Hey all, In the recent issue between OpenBSD and Linux wireless about the Atheros driver, GPL folks say they are allowed to relicense BSD-ed code provided they leave the copyright and the license in the code. There are some BSD folks who claim that the BSD license doesn't allow to relicense the code, because they aren't the copyright holders of the code so they cannot wrap the code in another license ie. GPL. What do people think? Petr
Re: Licenses again...
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007, Petr Janda wrote: > Hey all, > In the recent issue between OpenBSD and Linux wireless about the Atheros > driver, GPL folks say they are allowed to relicense BSD-ed code provided > they leave the copyright and the license in the code. There are some BSD > folks who claim that the BSD license doesn't allow to relicense the > code, because they aren't the copyright holders of the code so they > cannot wrap the code in another license ie. GPL. > > What do people think? The code has to have significant additions or modifications to be able to add your own copyright to the main part of the code. (As an example, should someone who fixes spelling and grammar and adds and changes a few sentences to a 100-page open source book be able to pretend that code is theirs?) Some of the code in question had dual licensing. In that case, both licenses should be included even when distributed. Jeremy C. Reed
Re: Licenses again...
On Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:42:48 pm you wrote: > The code has to have significant additions or modifications to be able to > add your own copyright to the main part of the code. > > (As an example, should someone who fixes spelling and grammar and adds and > changes a few sentences to a 100-page open source book be able to pretend > that code is theirs?) > > Some of the code in question had dual licensing. In that case, both > licenses should be included even when distributed. > > > Jeremy C. Reed But does the BSDL allow the code to be relicensed? ie. i am a GPL dev, and i take a file ftp.c which is BSD licensed. Can I wrap the code in GPL license (though preserving the BSD copyright and license in there)? The BSD license doesn't indicate that this is allowed. Petr
Re: Licenses again...
The issue between OpenBSD and Linux revolves around Sam Leffler's code (as in the Sam Leffler of FreeBSDland). Basically Sam's code is dual-licensed and he has explicitly said that people can use one license to the exclusion of the other. OpenBSD then took Sam's code and, per Sam's dual-license they decided to use the BSD license only. OpenBSD then modified Sam's code. In particular, I believe they reverse-engineered one of the black-box drivers. The code with these modifications is under a BSD license only. Someone in the linux arena took OpenBSD's code, stripped the license, and relicensed it w/ the GPL. That is what created the whole bruhaha. But if I understand the situation properly this stripping was accidental, only occured in one patch set, and was never committed to the linux repository. I do not have definitive information on this. In anycase, what followed after that was a whole mess, with OpenBSD people basically asking why the linux people wanted to put the code under the GPL when that would prevent any modifications they made from being able to go back into OpenBSD. What everyone with a brain agrees on is that you have to respect the license the code is distributed under and it is good policy to not change it or to add a license undesired by the author(s) the code was taken from, so a lot of people are scratching their heads wondering why the linux folks wanted to put their modifications under the GPL. Regardless of what the law allows, if open source developers do not follow that one simple rule they wind up in dog city. So all the legal bullshit is irrelevant. -- That said, it is very clearly the law that a person's copyright notice cannot be removed except by the original author. People can add their own copyrights if the modifications are significant enough (and as you know we do this all the time in BSDland), but the original copyright cannot be removed. Sam has stated that his original code explicitly allowed either BSD or GPL (big emphasis on 'or'). But just as clearly once the code got into the OpenBSD repository modifications were intended to be under the BSD license only. -Matt
Re: Licenses again...
:But does the BSDL allow the code to be relicensed? ie. i am a GPL dev, and i :take a file ftp.c which is BSD licensed. Can I wrap the code in GPL license :(though preserving the BSD copyright and license in there)? : :The BSD license doesn't indicate that this is allowed. : :Petr Commercial entities have used BSD licensed code for almost 30 years. Microsoft includes an FTP with BSD code in it in their distribution, for example, and this is perfectly acceptable. Microsoft's product, as a whole, operates under a far more restrictive license and there is no conflict. The BSD license was intended to allow this. There is no question about that. But how do we interpret, say, a source file that is under the BSD license then modified by a second developer who adds the GPL? Both licenses would then be present in the source file (the BSD license cannot be removed, except by the original author, so both would be present). Clearly the BSD license does not disallow the modifications made by the second developer to be placed under some other license. The BSD license only covers the BSD-licensed code. The question is how should a third party interpret the modified source file as a whole? I do not know the answer to that. Theo made a point of stating that he thought it meant that the BSD license completely trumped the GPL but Theo is no more a lawyer then I am so all I can do is throw up my hands and say 'I don't know'. -Matt Matthew Dillon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
