Apache style issue

[Ben Tilly]

2009/8/19 John Cowan <cowan at ccil.org>:
> Dag-Erling Smørgrav scripsit:
[...]
>> I'm sorry, but it is an undeniable fact that the Apache license imposes
>> restrictions that neither the BSD nor MIT licenses do, but *not* vice
>> versa; hence, the Apache license is more restrictive - or to put it
>> another way, the set of permissions granted by the Apache license is a
>> strict subset of the set of permissions granted by the BSD or MIT
>> license.
>
> It is also an undeniable fact that plain pizza is a strict subset of
> pepperoni pizza, but both would be well described as "pizza-style dishes".
> If we are to generalize across licenses at all, we must be prepared
> to blur certain details.  I consider the additional restrictions of
> the Apache license to constitute such details.  Naturally, the details
> become important when you are actually making use of works under license,
> but not when discussing licenses in general.

The details in this case cause the Apache license to be GPL v2
incompatible, while both the BSD and MIT licenses are GPL v2
compatible.  Given the importance of the GPL v2, this is a pretty
significant difference for free software authors.  Whether or not they
want to get into the details.

Cheers,
Ben