Date: Mon, 18 Jan 1999 15:35:45 -0800 (PST) From: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@kithrup.com> To: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Attempt to relicense BSD code under the GPL Message-ID: <199901182335.PAA13502@kithrup.com> In-Reply-To: <36A3B5D9.775BEE30.kithrup.freebsd.chat@newsguy.com> References: <4.1.19990118092136.0465ede0@mail.lariat.org>
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I wish only people who actually understood intellectual property laws, especially copyright, would bring up these kinds of discussions. And, no, I don't consider either Terry nor Brett to fit into that category. (Sorry.) That said: In article <36A3B5D9.775BEE30.kithrup.freebsd.chat@newsguy.com> you write: >Also, there is something about exceptions, but I could not get to >the file. So, maybe the BSD source is still under BSD. Nobody but the author(s) (or the peron(s) the author(s) has(have) authorized in writing, with an exchange of goods for good measure) can change the licensing terms of any copywritten work. (Excluding the gov't and other extreme cases.) However, it is entirely possible to take a BSD-licensed piece of code, slap a GPL on it, and be fully legal. The trick, which I think is obvious and so should anyone who actually thinks about it (ref. my initial comment), is that the new license only covers any changes made to the original. There are some potentially interesting conflicts w.r.t. advertising and whatnot, but, for the most part, this is doable and has been done in the past, and will be done again in the future. This comes up fairly often with public-domain works (both code and other). Although I strongly urge that everyone read the hideous "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" as well, because it changes a bunch of stuff. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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