Scope of copyright on derivative works

[Wilson, Andrew]

Chuck Swiger wrote:

> Chris used the phrase "permission grant" rather than "above copyright

> notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer", but  
> most of his key point here:
>
>> What the BSD license does not do is prevent you from enforcing your  
>> own copyrights as you see fit.  Those could be released under the  
>> GPL v2 or a proprietary license.  However, you cannot extend the  
>> GPL restrictions to copyrighted elements you don't have a claim  
>> to.  This means that BSD-licensed code is always under the BSD  
>> license *only* unless the copyright author approves a license  
>> change, ...
>
> ...makes perfect sense to me.  What I'm not convinced about is this  
> conclusion:
>
>> ...and thus seems to pose no differences in GPL3 compatibility  
>> issues when compared to the MS-PL.
>
>...because the GPL forbids redistribution of GPL'ed code under any  
>other terms, whereas the BSDL does not have such a restriction.

Correct, BSDL does not.  But MS-PL (now MS-OL?) has a GPL-like
restriction,
which is its fundamental novelty wrt BSDL or MIT.

The flaw in Chris's reasoning is that anything which is not
forbidden under BSDL (removing the original copyright notice, using the
author's name
without permission, suing the author) is allowed.  Adding
additional Ts and Cs to the core BSD set is allowed when creating a
derivative
of BSDL code, be they GPL terms or (to pick another prominent usage of 
BSDL licensed code) those of an Apple proprietary end user license.

Andy Wilson
Intel open source technology center