Jarno Elonen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'd like to get some clarifications on how to interpret GPL's 
> derivations-must-also-be-licensed-under-GPL feature and similar demands in 
> other licenses. Namely: [...]

Please try http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html first.

> My understanding is that the often told "you may relicense BSD-new code under 
> GPL" doesn't actually mean "you may wipe away the BSD license text and put 
> GPL in its' place (along with the copyright notices)" but instead "you may 
> amend the BSD-new license with (e.g.) GPL's extra restrictions, hence, making 
> it effectively GPL'd"? Also, have I understood correctly, that the package 
> should contain *both* license texts (or references to them) along with a list 
> stating which parts fall under which license?

I think you need to ask: What is copyright? I was told that it's
a right, a property created by creative work. It is attached
to the output of that action (what we usually call "the work"
here), but it is not that output: it's intangible itself.
At http://www.eff.org/IP/?f=copyright_law.paper.txt there's a
bit about "What is copyright?" which is along these lines.

So, you can license your copyright, the result of any creative
work you put into the software, with any compatible license,
but the copyright to the original work remains under its original
licence, no matter what you do. You still have to satisfy any
conditions for accessing the copyright to that work, and people
can take that bit and discard the stuff covered by your copyright
if they want. See the GPL FAQ question about extracting a public
domain part from a GPL-covered work. I think that covers your
next two questions too.

How clear you have to be about which parts have which copyrights
attached depends on the licences, I think.

Interpretations are often a bit dangerous to rely upon, so I
won't answer the last two questions.

I'm not a lawyer. Find better advice before doing anything which
might even possibly be copyright infringement. ;-)
-- 
MJR/slef
My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/
Subscribed to this list. No need to Cc, thanks.


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