Hello, > I don't think anyone feels that you're raising obstacles -- it's good > to have a discussion about this up front, so that we have a clear > position for the future. We want to encourage a lot of contributions > and 3rd party developments, and limiting the number of licenses too > much or being too stringent can only hurt that cause. So I think it's > good that this has been brought up now. > > Also, as I said in a personal mail to you, welcome back to the project!
Thanks. Indeed my main objective was to alert that the present wording and general feeling of the licensing terms, while understandable and with a good reasoning, just seemed a bit to hostile to anyone who happens to like the GPL. David, Offtopic, but important to understand why some people think the BSDL is incompatible with the GPL: >The complete work becomes GPL'd and the BSDL components remain BSDL >individually That can't be the case, since the GPL requires the whole derived work to be GPL'ed: (from http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean) "What does it mean to say a license is "compatible with the GPL". 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. ***The GPL permits such a combination provided it is released under the GNU GPL. The other license is compatible with the GPL if it permits this too.***" Emphasis mine. So if the BSDL components are said to remain BSDL'ed in the combined work then it is not compatible with the GPL. The FSF says it is compatible since the terms are a subset of the GPL, and so in terms of law the GPL can replace the BSDL completely while satisfying the requirement of the BSDL. If this is the case or not it depends on the opinion, but to be compatible the BSDL needs to allow the *complete* distributed work to be GPL'ed. IANAL and all that, and this is a very grey area. Regards, Frederico Muñoz _______________________________________________ Etoile-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-dev
