The issue here is not BSD+GPL licenses in general, although that's also
an issue to worry about; the issue we most vocally warn people about is
very specific to OpenSim and Second Life. OpenSim has been made legally
possible due to the generosity of Linden Lab's publishing their
protocols by means of some public documentation and, yes, open sourcing
the client [under GPL]. So far, we have had the passive and, at points,
active support of Linden Lab in developing OpenSim. But, as we all know,
Linden Lab is a relatively unpredictable company; at any point, it could
be acquired by another company who is less enthusiastic about a free BSD
open source server side to their client. In the absolute worst case
scenario, that other company could cause us a lot of grief if OpenSim
includes code directly derived from GPL'ed viewer code. (I don't want to
start a rhetorical discussion about this; that's just the worst case
scenario, period.)
Hence, the "no risks" rule. We do not take patches from anyone who is
actively involved in the development of viewers from the LL viewer family.
If, however, you are talking about your own modules that aren't part of
the official OpenSim distribution, then OpenSim has no say about it --
do whatever you want. No one here is in a position to give legal advice.
On 6/30/2010 4:18 AM, Neil Canham wrote:
Would anyone be able to tell me about the warning for any one person
not to work on both the OpenSim source and a viewer such as Hippo? I
understand that there are licensing differences (BSD vs GPL
respectively) and that direct inclusion of GPL code in a BSD project
breaks the GPL license. Surely you could guard against such direct
inclusion? Does this extend to region modules and mini-region
modules? I'm in the position of wanting to make changes to the viewer
and also to write MRMs or other modules.
--
Neil Canham
--
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