Re: License furor | |
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On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 05:58:32PM -0400, William M. Quarles wrote:
Vincent Stemen wrote:I just looked there and there the line
People claim that this problem in the XFree86 1.1 License is similar to the "advertising clause" problem of the original BSD license. According to the GNU GPL website, that license was GPL incompatible because of this clause in the GPL:
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."
Interesting. I don't think I have seen that version of the BSD license. Yes, not only would that be GPL incompatible, but I think it would restrict the BSD code from being used in commercial derived products as well, similar the the GPL. That must be a pretty old license.
The BSD License was revised to be its current form in 1999. Both forms may be found here (the revised one is first): <http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/COPYRIGHT2.html#4>
"You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein."
Is not in either license including the 1993 UCB/LBL one. They are the same licenses I have always seen. If that statement came from a BSD license, then I would like to see a link to it.
XFree86 4.3.0 docs claim that there are many different versions of the BSD license, but there have really only been two main ones (with the UCB/LBL being a subset of the original license, which the docs kind of show).
<http://www.xfree86.org/4.3.0/LICENSE4.html>
It actually goes both ways. You are correct that it must satisfy both licenses. The reason I said you must use the most restrictive licenses in a combined work is because the less restrictive licenses such as the BSD or MIT, or even more relaxed, public domain, do not prevent you from adding restrictions. That is why you can include their code in commercial projects.
<snip>
That is the reason we favor the less restrictive licenses, even over the GPL, for primary projects, because that gives everybody more freedom to utilize the code in branch projects and combine code with code from other licenses, including commercial.
I think that you are misusing the term "commercial license" here. By commercial, you really mean non-free (as in no-freedom, not as in don't-have-to-pay-for), closed-source license.
By commercial, I primarily meant code you have to pay for.
There is nothing in the GPL that prevents you from selling the software commercially. Far from it. You can sell GPLed software.
Where did you get that idea? It is common knowledge that the GPL is specifically designed to block commercial sale as well as make sure source will always be available.
It is designed to allow you to charge a reasonable fee for distribution costs but not to actually sell the software or derived works. It mentions this in several places, but here are a couple of the primary statements in the license.
Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), ...
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
There are many companies doing it right now. But it must stay under the GPL. Any software that becomes a derivative work of GPL
Like who? Linux vendors, for example, are charging for distribution costs, support, and add on commercial software. Not directly for GPL'd code.
Doing my best in trying to scan over the GPL, I don't think that the modified BSD license is in reality GPL-compatible (if one is going to nit-pick in the way that they are saying that XF86 1.1 License is incompatible) because the modified BSD requires that both the source code and the binary display the BSD license and the copyright notice, whereas the the GPL only requires that the source code display the license and copyright notice.
I just looked over the GPL version 2 again and it looks to me like it does require the license to be included with the binaries which would make it compatible with the BSD license.
It says,
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above...
Notice it says "under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above". And under section 1, it says
...keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.
"Under the terms of Section 2" makes sense, however, "under the terms of section 1," you are taking that "keep intact" statement out of context. Section 1 still only talks about the source code, therefore "under the terms of section 1" when when making requirements for "object code or executable form" makes zero sense. They may have tried to require that the license be distributed with the binaries, but they haven't.
I disagree. Read section 3 above again. It clearly states you may distribute it in executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2. That means that section 1 does not apply only to source code.
To relate this back to the topic of license compatibility, TTBOMK, that is why the FreeBSD license requirement of including the license with binaries is not incompatible with the GPL. Besides, since the GPL requires source to be available as you mentioned, which also has the license, there are two layers making sure that the license is available for binaries. So the BSD license does not apply any requirements not already there.
Peace, William _______________________________________________ Forum mailing list Forum@xxxxxxxxxxx http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/forum
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