combining software under different licenses

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi Richard,

On Sun, 2009-08-30 at 08:15 -0400, Richard Fontana wrote: 
> There are some other licenses that actually affirmatively require the
> licensee to share improvements with upstream licensors. I understand
> the FSF's position (based on discussions between the FSF and the Fedora
> Project) to be that requirements to provide otherwise non-distributed
> changes upstream are non-free, as are requirements to provide
> already-distributed changes where the upstream licensor has not first
> specifically requested them.

That sounds a bit like the "Desert Island test" that is often used on
debian-legal to interpret whether licenses meet the Debian Free Software
Guidelines. http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html#desert_island
        
        Imagine a castaway on a desert island with a solar-powered
        computer. This would make it impossible to fulfill any
        requirement to make changes publicly available or to send
        patches to some particular place. This holds even if such
        requirements are only upon request, as the castaway might be
        able to receive messages but be unable to send them. To be free,
        software must be modifiable by this unfortunate castaway, who
        must also be able to legally share modifications with friends on
        the island.

Cheers,

Mark