On 9/4/07, Alfredo Portes wrote: > Bill Page asked: > > Would this mean that Guess could not be included in any of the > > existing Axiom forks (which are all licensed under modified BSD)? > > But I was under the assumption that modified BSD is compatible with GPL. >
Yes that is definitely true: modified BSD *is* compatible with GPL. Sometimes all this licensing nonsense is hard to get your head around. Here is how I understand it: One of the defining characteristics of GPL is that *if* you incorporate *any* source code from some other package that is licensed under GPL into some new product - _whatever the license of the original code_ - *then* the entire derived work must be licensed under GPL. That is what is meant by saying that GPL is a "viral license" and that it "infects" the otherwise compatible licenses of other software packages. (Of course people who phrase things this way usually intend to cast GPL in an apparently negative light.) But this is a deliberate feature of GPL to which some people object and other people applaud. It all depends on how you think open source licensing and free access to source code is best promoted. Actually this kind of "infection" is not such an unusual thing. For example: modified BSD is also compatible with Aldor's new APL2 license. Incorporating Aldor into Axiom in such a way that Aldor was *required* in order to build Axiom would have a similar affect of "infecting" Axiom with Aldor's "non-commerical uses only clause". The difference is that GPL requires infection to occur even in the case when the GPL software to be included is not an integral and essential part of the combined package. So in this case, if Martin's GUESS code is licensed under GPL and it is added permanently to any of the AXIOM distributions that are normally licensed under modified BSD, the license of the combined result must be GPL. Since it is apparently the intention of the Axiom distributions to remain licensed under modified BSD, this means that GUESS could not be included in any of these Axiom distributions. But in any case this "infection" has already occurred for those Axiom distributions that require certain GCL components (unexec,bfd and xgcl). So maybe this is not such a big deal when all is said and done. I am sorry to be so pedantic and possibly annoying to some people but I hope that what I am saying makes sense. Regards, Bill Page. _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
