Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL

[Mark Rafn]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:

> I'm sorry, Brian, I just don't view these things as "additional
> restrictions" -- yet another example of vagueness in the GPL.

I'm confused how something I can do under the GPL but cannot do under the 
AFL is not an additional restriction.  Ah, well.

> Regardless, the explicit exclusion of a trademark license and the mutual
> defense provision are not going to disappear from the AFL.

Regardless, this is not GPL-compatible. 

> I've assured you, as the license author, that the AFL-licensor doesn't
> care if his work is incorporated into a GPL-licensed or Apache-licensed
> work.

That doesn't matter.  Even if the AFL permits this, the GPL does not.  
It's not you, the AFL copyright holder, who can choose not to care.  It's
Jimmy Q. Gplauthor, whose copyright is infringed by having a derivative
work (the GPL+AFL code) distributed under more restrictive terms than the
GPL.

> The GPL/Apache-licensor who includes AFL-licensed components also
> shouldn't care; his work is licensed as he wishes, under the
> GPL/Apache-license, without warranty of any kind.  Neither of these
> parties would ever sue each other.  After all, they're both into free
> software!

Very very wrong.  The GPL licensor specifically chose the GPL and is 
often very picky about people distributing derived works under 
non-GPL-compatible conditions.

IANAL, TINLA, etc.  But this is very clear to me.
--
Mark Rafn    dagon at dagon.net    <http://www.dagon.net/>  
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