Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 03:26:49 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: Ian Pulsford <ianjp@optusnet.com.au>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Abuses of the BSD license? Message-ID: <3CB01EE9.99E0813E@mindspring.com> References: <3CAE7037.801FB15F@optusnet.com.au> <3CAEA028.186ED53E@optusnet.com.au> <20020406105111.A90057@lpt.ens.fr> <3CAEDDD2.2ADA819F@mindspring.com> <20020406114505.GA2576@lpt.ens.fr> <3CAEE4A1.315CF53@mindspring.com> <20020406191209.GA3203@lpt.ens.fr> <3CAF8204.5E93CE38@mindspring.com> <20020407084801.GA4429@lpt.ens.fr> <3CB01A09.C86F98FC@mindspring.com> <20020407101223.GA4647@lpt.ens.fr>
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Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Terry Lambert said on Apr 7, 2002 at 03:06:01: > > > That looks, to me, like effectively dropping the BSD licence terms, > > > since you don't know what they apply to; sure you can find out with > > > some research, but you could have done that anyway, given just a BSD > > > copyright notice and no licence. And when redistributing, you can > > > just continue to bundle the BSD licence, now made meaningless by this > > > "we're not telling you what pieces" disclaimer. > > > > Wrong. Without explicit delineation of what it applies to, > > you must assume it applies to everything, not that it applies > > to nothing -- else why would it be there at all? > > That was precisely my point with respect to Microsoft: without > explicit delineation, how do they (a) include the BSD licence, > (b) not imply that it applies to everything they're shipping? By including it in the documentation, and indicating "portions of this software contain code licensed under the following license". The assumption that it applies to everything has to be made with a logical OR, not a logocal XOR, of restrictions. And since the GPL in section 6 prohibits additional restrictions, it prohibits such combinations of code. > > > For your own protection, if you're Microsoft you must make it > > > explicitly clear exactly what the BSD licence applies to -- it > > > clearly applies to something you're shipping; and surely you can't > > > say "this licence applies to some code in our ftp binary, but not > > > to the binary as a whole, and if you want to know exactly what it > > > applies to and thus take advantage of this licence, you have to go > > > find the relevant pieces of source code for yourself; we won't > > > help you." > > To which you wrote: > > > Sure they can say that. Why couldn't they? > > Well, can they or can't they? They can say that it applies to portions of the code. > If they can, why can't the GNU folks? It's not possible to do this and remain in compliance with the GPL. The GPL can not say that it applies to portions of the code, since that would mean that the whole is either in violation of the additional restrictions clause in section 6 of the GPL: 4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance. Or it is in violation of (2)(b) of the GPL: 2. b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. Thus no matter how you approach it, you are making a non-compliant combination through exercise of your rights granted by the GPL, and doing so terminates those rights. It is therefore not possible to legally create such derivative works of both GPL'ed and BSD licensed code. The LGPL is another matter, entirely: so long as you can satisfy the relink clause, you are fine: the LGPL has fewer restrictions on derivative works. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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