Qt/Embedded

[kmself at ix.netcom.com]

on Mon, Nov 13, 2000 at 06:56:42PM -0800, David Johnson (david at usermode.org) wrote:
> On Monday 13 November 2000 12:25 am, kmself at ix.netcom.com wrote:
> 
> > The governing principles are, as I understand, these:
> >
> >   - The GPL requires that derived works of the original work not add or
> >     remove licensing and/or redistribution terms.
> >
> >   - The BSD (non-advertising clause) and MIT licenses allow modification
> >     of distribution terms, so long as a copyright notice is retained.
> >
> >   - The copyright notice requirement of the BSD/MIT licenses is
> >     consistant with a similar copyright notice requirement of the GNU
> >     GPL.  Therefore the BSD/MIT licenses are convertible to the GPL.
> 
> All true enough. However, that still means that I can't license my
> application under the BSD license. Because if my application is a
> derivative work (and RMS thinks it is), then my BSD license removes
> distribution terms.  This is perfectly acceptable on my end, as I'm
> not distributing any GPL code.

Yes.  BSD/MIT is one-way transitive to GPL.  You can start with BSD/MIT
code and end with GPL code.  You can't take the GPLd code, or
derivatives, and release it under BSD/MIT terms again.

> > In the instance you describe above, BSD/MIT code could link to or
> > incorporate GPL code, but only if the derived work were distributed
> > under the terms of the GNU GPL.
> 
> But then I'm not distributing it under the BSD/MIT license :-) It's
> sort of like saying I can vote Democrat or Republican, so long as I
> vote Democrat. It makes no sense to say its okay to use the BSD
> license so long as I distribute under the GPL.

The key is that there are licenses which don't offer this transitivity.
The MozPL, as an example, isn't compatible with the GPL unless special
measures (say, dual licensing) are taken.

Besides, the point of the BSD/MIT licenses is to allow this licensing
transitivity.  You'd similarly not be able to redistribute code derived
from BSD/MIT terms after combining it with a typical proprietary
license.

> > I'm not sure what specifically you're referring to here.
> > "Independent and seperate works" doesn't appear in the GPL, what are
> > you quoting?
> 
> Okay, okay. So I spelled "seperate" wrong! Look under section 2, the fifth 
> paragraph, and the second sentence.

Sorry.  And I can't spell it either, or I might've noticed.

As I understand, the "Independent and separate" language refers to
programs which don't cross the link-layer boundary.  Though this is a
bit fuzzy in definition.  Whether you can get away with shipping, say,
binaries and object files, I'm not sure.  As seperate entities, shipped
separately, possibly.  Together, probably not.

IANAL.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>     http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
 Evangelist, Zelerate, Inc.                      http://www.zelerate.org
  What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?      There is no K5 cabal
   http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/        http://www.kuro5hin.org
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