Daniel Veditz wrote:
> I took another look at some of the licenses the FSF considers GPL compatible
> (http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses).
> Most of those are chock full of restrictions, along the lines you can't
> remove the original copyright info and license from these files.
That sort of restriction is already in the GPL, so IMO it doesn't count
as a restriction above and beyond the GPL.
A more interesting question is, are any of those GPL-compatible licenses
copyleft licenses? I have never seen this stated explicitly, but I
suspect that the only copyleft licenses that the FSF would ever consider
compatible with the GPL are the GPL itself, LGPL, dual licenses
involving the GPL or LGPL, and minor variants of the preceding licenses.
There have been at least two attempts to create non-GPL copyleft
licenses "from scratch", the NPL/MPL and the Jabber Open Source License,
and the FSF considers both of them incompatible with the GPL.
> To change the subject slightly, my investigation caused me to realize that
> Exhibit A doesn't state that users of the code must keep the copyright
> notice intact. Section 3.5 of the license does, however, though some folks
> might argue it only says you have to duplicate the stock Exhibit A in the
> MPL itself, not preserve the one found in the source code. I hope I'm wrong
> on that loophole, but it still might be nice to add a line to this effect in
> Exhibit A itself.
Yes, this has been discussed previously in connection with the dual
license Exhibit A and the idea of altering the exhibit (i.e., as
included in source files) to remove either the MPL or the GPL sections
of the dual license language.
I agree that there is ambiguity in the NPL/MPL regarding this, and that
the language should be tightened up in future versions to make it clear
that licensees are not allowed to alter existing copyright notices and
license notices (except to add themselves as contributors as
appropriate).
Frank
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Frank Hecker work: http://www.collab.net/
[EMAIL PROTECTED] home: http://www.hecker.org/
