Redistributions must retain this list of conditions

Paul Guyot pguyot at kallisys.net
Sun Nov 11 08:15:34 UTC 2001


>"Relicense" is a misleading expression, and should probably be
>avoided, as it leads to wifty thinking.

Alright, thanks for the advice.

>What is meant is that program A, licensed under BSD, can be
>combined with program B, licensed under GPL, to produce a new
>work A+B licensed under the GPL, because the resulting work
>meets both BSD and GPL criteria for derivative works.

You seem to refer to the GPL's section 2 about combined works. It 
seems to say that A+B would then be released under the GPL, but the 
mere part A of A+B is still under the BSD.

The problem is that A+B is a derivative work (in the meaning of the 
Berne Convention) of A and of B and if you take part A from A+B, it's 
a derivative work of A+B.

Now, let's suppose we have this. BSD clauses (you must reproduce this 
list of conditions) only applies to A when taken from A+B? So if we 
consider original's BSD advertise section, it means that you only 
need to meet it if it's an ad about A, not if it's an ad about A+B?

>Because the GPL requires that no restrictions be placed on derivative
>works except those of the GPL itself.  The old BSD license did place
>such a restriction on derivative works: the source needed to be mentioned
>in the documentation.  As such, work D licensed under old BSD could
>not be combined with B to form B+D.

Wait. What I call Original BSD is BSD as on OSI website with clause 3:

>3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this 
>software must display the following acknowledgement:
>  This product includes software developed by the University of
>  California, Berkeley and its contributors.

Or Apache SL if you prefer.

My question is, what is the difference regarding GPL compatibility with:
>1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright 
>notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
>2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 
>notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the 
>documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

It clearly requires things which aren't required by the GPL. So it 
places restrictions on derivative works which are not those of the 
GPL, doesn't it?

Or I could delete the copyright mention "Copyright (c) <YEAR>, 
<OWNER> All rights reserved." (and the conditions & the disclaimer) 
from the documentation of my software including BSD-licensed code?

Paul
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