Re: [dev] [license] gpl issues
On 23/06/18 04:58PM, Miles Rout wrote: > As far as I understand, if you create a work (A) that is a fork of another > work (B), where B is MIT-licensed, nothing stops you from licensing A as GPL. > I > wouldn't call it "relicensing": you're licensing your own work, A, which > happens to be derived from B. You aren't licensing B, which is someone else's > work. You do need to credit B's copyright holders of course. > > Have I got something wrong here? I am no copyright lawyer, that is for sure, > so I cannot claim any expertise. Or did you mean something different? You can't license the whole of A as GPL, only your modifications. Expat license requires that: > The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all > copies or substantial portions of the Software. which explicitely forbids removing the copyright and permission notices on Expat-licensed code, or replacing them with, say, GPL notices. Like I said, Expat license is GPL-compatible[1]. That means[2]: > It means that the other license and the GNU GPL are compatible; you can > combine > code released under the other license with code released under the GNU GPL in > one larger program. > > All GNU GPL versions permit such combinations privately; they also permit > distribution of such combinations provided the combination is released under > the same GNU GPL version. The other license is compatible with the GPL if it > permits this too. > > GPLv3 is compatible with more licenses than GPLv2: it allows you to make > combinations with code that has specific kinds of additional requirements > that > are not in GPLv3 itself. Section 7 has more information about this, including > the list of additional requirements that are permitted. However, it *doesn't* mean that I can just take someone's program A licensed under Expat and relicense the parts of my fork B (realistically, perhaps 95% of program A) under GPL. More precisely, that is not legally possible, as I stated before. [1]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#Expat [2]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [dev] [license] gpl issues
Hi Hiltjo, > you'd have to keep both the MIT license with the original copyright > information. I believe this part is true because almost all MIT style licenses (with some exception such as `MIT-0`) have the following restriction: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. > I think you can relicense only your own changes to GPL [...] > > And probably explain very clearly to which new parts the GPL license applies. However, I don't believe these are true. Because there's nothing in the MIT license that requires tracking which part is new nor is there anything preventing derivative work under a different license. So my understanding is more or less the same as what Markus Wichmann said on the other reply. - NRK
Re: [dev] [license] gpl issues
Am Sun, Jun 18, 2023 at 11:44:18AM +0200 schrieb Hiltjo Posthuma: > Hi, > > I think you can relicense only your own changes to GPL, so you'd have to keep > both the MIT and GPL license with the original copyright information. > > And probably explain very clearly to which new parts the GPL license applies. > This is false. When you create a program, call it foo, and release it under the MIT license, then you give permission to anyone to re-release it with or without changes. Great. Now I come along, create a program bar, and base it upon foo. bar is a derivative work of foo, and so I as creator of bar need permission from you as creator of foo to create it. Luckily I have your permission. It is in the license (license and permission mean substantially the same thing). So I can release all of bar under the GPL. All I have to do is write into the documentation: bar, Copyright Markus Wichmann, released under the terms of the GPL, see file COPYING. Based on foo, Copyright Hiltjo Posthuma, released under the terms of the MIT license, see file COPYING.foo. That way, I have fulfilled the terms of your license and am therefore allowed to create a derivative work (which I would class under a mix of "use", "copy", "modify", and "merge"). And for my own work, I can use whatever license I wish, and I choose the GPL. I could also choose a commercial license. So long as I fulfill the terms of your license, that is all OK for me to do, since that is what you have given me permission to do. The other way around would not work, since if I create a work and license it under the GPL, then I do not give you permission to rerelease the work without restriction. I only allow you to do so under the same license terms. Summary: Words have meaning. Ciao, Markus
Re: [dev] [license] gpl issues
On Sun, Jun 18, 2023 at 04:58:07PM +1200, Miles Rout wrote: > > > On 6 May 2023 8:56:23 pm NZST, "Страхиња Радић" wrote: > > But that is pointless to > >bring up here, because the reality is that the programmers who made suckless > >software mostly picked Expat License (and are calling it "the MIT License"). > >It > >is irrelevant for non-GPL programs I fork or contribute to, because once the > >license is picked, software it applies to can't be relicensed. > > As far as I understand, if you create a work (A) that is a fork of another > work (B), where B is MIT-licensed, nothing stops you from licensing A as GPL. > I wouldn't call it "relicensing": you're licensing your own work, A, which > happens to be derived from B. You aren't licensing B, which is someone else's > work. You do need to credit B's copyright holders of course. > > Have I got something wrong here? I am no copyright lawyer, that is for sure, > so I cannot claim any expertise. Or did you mean something different? > > >Here we come to my main point: that this is a troll topic, promoting > >division > >and pushing the main suckless principles to the background. Consequently, I > >already wrote too much here. > > I see no trolling in this thread. Suckless people generally seem to respect > others' opinions. Nice to see in this day and age! > > Kind regards, > Miles. > Hi, I think you can relicense only your own changes to GPL, so you'd have to keep both the MIT and GPL license with the original copyright information. And probably explain very clearly to which new parts the GPL license applies. -- Kind regards, Hiltjo
