Compatibility of the AFL with the GPL

[Brian Behlendorf]

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Mark Rafn wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Lawrence E. Rosen wrote:
>
[...]
> > Linus Torvalds learns about WhizBanger and he and his team decide to
> > include WhizBanger in their new release of Linux.  As usual, they
> > release their new Linux, with full source code, under the GPL.  The
> > Debian project thinks the new release of Linux is wonderful.  They
> > include the modified Linux in their new distribution, also under the
> > GPL.
>
> By doing so, every distributor of Linux+WhizBanger violates the copyright
> of a whole lot of contributors to the Linux kernel.

Yeah, I couldn't get past this part either.  In this hypo, Linus has not
released it "under the GPL".  It's "under the GPL, and which requires the
recipient to accept the AFL from the WhizBanger developers".  The GPL
forbids this, so Linus can't include WhizBanger in his release.  He could
distribute it separately, of course, under the same (some claim
questionable) theory that allows proprietary kernel modules, etc.

> > Brian Behlendorf learns about WhizBanger and he convinces the Apache
> > team to include WhizBanger in their new release of Apache.  As usual,
> > they release with full source code under the Apache license.
>
> I'm less familiar with exact requirements of the Apache license.  I don't
> know if it's compatible with the APL.

The Apache license, like most licenses other than the [L]GPL, doesn't
prevent people from adding restrictions to derived works.  So, someone
could combine Apache-licensed code and AFL-licensed code and legally
redistribute it.  Such redistribution would not solely be under the Apache
license, though, it would be via an Apache license from the author of the
derived work, and an AFL to the authors of WhizBanger.  So again, the
example doesn't hold water.

	Brian

--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3