Date: 24 Dec 2001 12:45:44 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Does Linux violate the GPL? Message-ID: <w8adw8tkhz.dw8@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20011224120539.01ce4170@localhost> References: <20011223153232.4b562a74.dwalton@acm.org> <20011223153232.4b562a74.dwalton@acm.org> <4.3.2.7.2.20011224120539.01ce4170@localhost>
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Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> writes: > This brings up a larger issue. Is it ethical or even legal for someone > to combine GPLed code with BSDLed code and slap the GPL on the result > without stating which lines are really BSDLed? It seems to me that > even if the BSDL is also present in the source file, a person has > violated the BSDL by doing this because the BSDL requires that the > license must follow the code. If it's no longer clear which code > in the file is covered by the BSDL, the license has effectively been > separated from the code it's supposed to stay with. Looking at the BSDL, one sees no indication that the licensor cares about that. It seems to only care that the liability declaimer (FWIW) be available to those that receive the code, and maybe some attribution, and those goals are achieved even without very detailed copyright claims. Note that the actual "license" (the permissions) part of the BSDL isn't required to be propagated. I've often wondered if the BSDL (or any license) isn't effectively "viral" when mix-license code is comingled without low-level ID. How does a new owner of a copy know that the BSDL's terms don't apply to the non-BSDL parts? Messy. The BSDL only requires that "Redistributions of source code must retain...". That's rather fuzzy, but I doubt that it requires explicit notification of each piece of original code. And in some derivative work, say, where variable names have been changed and expressions rearragned, it's not even possible to point to what each copyright owner owns independently of the other in the derivative. Some licenses require such designation. I'll bet they put a real crimp in their usefulness in derivations, when they are not simply ignored. Is it ethical (if the GPL allowed it)? I think that has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Take 1000 BSDL'd functions, add your main(), throw them all in one file with two copyright statements and two offers of license, and I'd call that legal, but unethical. Doing the same with 1 BSDL'd function and 1000 of your own, and I don't think so. The more and better the attribution (of copyright ownership AND authorship, if different), the better, but only to some point of reasonableness. The issue is not much different with multiple owners of BSDL'd code. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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