Re: wdm copyright

[Raja R Harinath <harinath@cs.umn.edu>]

john@dhh.gt.org writes:
> Marcelo writes:
> > Now my question is: is it ok to release this thing under the GPL?  Moving
> > from the X Consortium's license to GPL is a rather drastic license
> > change. Should the copyright read something more like xbase's copyright,
> > i.e., the part the wdm author wrote is GPLed, and the xdm stuff is still
> > under X Consortium's license or XFree86's?
> 
> That is what actually happens, regardless of what license he puts on his
> derivative work.  That is, no matter what his license says, I can copy out
> the material that he copied from xdm and do anything with it that complies
> with the xdm license.
> 
> You must, of course, include the xdm license in your wdm package.  If the
> wdm author has not done so he is infringing the xdm copyright.

Here's part of Marcelo's mail that you snipped:

"Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@efis.ucr.ac.cr> writes:
>  recently someone announced a new xdm-alike application: wdm (WINGs
>  Display Manager). It's GPLed. But it's based on XDM (based = most of
>  the code is xdm actually and you need xdm's source to build
				^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>  this). The X Consortium copyright appears on xdm's source, so I
   ^^^^^
>  presume this license applies to it:

Seems like the author of `wdm' doesn't distribute the `xdm' code.  In
such a case, I don't see why he has to include the `xdm' license.  This
probably also makes quite clear which parts are GPLed (the `wdm'
modifications) and which parts aren't.  

I haven't seen the `wdm' distribution, and I may be completely wrong in
my assumptions.

- Hari
-- 
Raja R Harinath ------------------------------ harinath@cs.umn.edu
"When all else fails, read the instructions."      -- Cahn's Axiom
"Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing."   -- Roy L Ash