[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On Wed, 2008-03-19 at 16:20 +0000, Robin Cornelius wrote: > I know how we like a good license discussion here ;-) :-) > secondlife is GPL licenced > opensim is BSD licenced, That would be OK as it is the revised BSD licence - except that the combination of the two must be under the GPL, not the BSD licence. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#OrigBSD http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Contributions_Policy It does appear to be the updated BSD without the advertising clause, so the code is compatible with the GPL. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license > IS this a reasonable stance, or a paranoid one without good reason? If they want to use only the BSD licence, then it does need to be that way. They can stipulate the licence for contributions, they cannot (and AFAICT do not) try to stop others combining the code after release and releasing that modified version under the GPL. i.e. opensim is proprietary-friendly, secondlife is not. Mixing the two means that opensim loses all ability to link against proprietary code. If they value that option, they are right to not let GPL code into the upstream source. If this was a Debian package, the maintainer would be unable to forward some patches upstream. > If the BSD code was to copy large chunks of GPL code (and inherit the > GPL responsibilities) all this would actually do is in force the GPL, > must share the code if you modify on the whole project. Is this true? Yes but that is what they seem to want to avoid. > The only way some one could be sued was if a 3rd party took the code > (with GPL bits) and built a closed product with modifications (and not > releasing the source) thus infringing the gpl? No, the reason appears to be a desire to stick with the ability to link against proprietary code. It would appear to be part of their multi-platform approach and desire to support making money from the code. Now that may be misguided (plenty of people use GPL code on Win32 as long as it is done via CygWin and plenty of people make money from GPL software) but they have the privilege of making that mistake. ;-) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html