Frank Hecker wrote:
>
> 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.
True, but if we said a MPL'd file could be used as GPL as long as the MPL
header remains intact we haven't added any additional restrictions either --
the file can be treated as GPL and has the same requirement the acceptable
BSD/MIT/Zlib etc licenses have. The only time additional restrictions come
into play is if the modified MPL'd portion is separated from the GPL'd
project.
So what happens to code in a BSD file when part of a GPL project? Since you
have to leave the license header intact then if that code is separated out
of the GPL project it's covered by BSD presumably. Perhaps this is legal
becase the BSD technically has fewer restrictions than GPL, but the results
are far less in the spirit of GPL than the equivalent situation with MPL is,
and yet this seems to be no problem to the FSF.
I am confused.
-Dan Veditz
