Re: KDE not in Debian?
Mark Wielaard wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 31, 2000 at 05:07:45AM -0500, Andreas Pour wrote:
> >
> > Jeff Licquia wrote:
> >
> > > This is all true. However, the BSD licensing terms are not being
> > > violated, are they? There is no clause in the BSD license that
> > > requires me to redistribute under the same terms; it simply gives me
> > > blanket permissions to redistribute, subject to these three
> > > conditions, none of which say anything about my right to place added
> > > restrictions.
> >
> > I think you stated at some other point that if a right is not granted you
> > don't have it. I
> > think we agree that under copyright law you normally do not have a right to
> > make copies and
> > redistribute. The BSD license says you can redistribute. To go from that
> > to say you can
> > redistribute under any terms, rather than continuing to distribute under the
> > original terms,
> > you want is IMHO a stretch. Maybe a court would rule so if the situation
> > arose, but as you
> > appear to be concerned about the threat of a lawsuit and/or complying with a
> > social contract
> > I would think this uncertainty would trouble you as well.
>
> There is no uncertainty in this case. You are distributing under the original
> terms. You only added some other terms (that are not in contradiction with the
> original terms since the GPL also mentions them).
Adding terms is changing the license. Otherwise I can add a provision to the
GPL which says, "Notwithstanding anything in this License to the contrary, if the
distributor is [XXXXX] then Section 6 does not apply". Or you might play with it
a bit more, but the point is, if you add terms to a license, you change it.
Anyway, I want to repeat that the problem w/ XFree/GPL is not that the GPL's terms
are more restrictive. The problem is that, under your reading of the GPL, as it
has been explained to me, you require that the XFree code itself be licensed under
the GPL. And this violates the provision of the XFree license which in effect
says that you have to redistirbute the X code (but not any code you add to
it) under the same XFree license.
> > Now in the case of UCB code in particular, IIRC they may be on public record
> > as not
> > objecting to such redistributions, but that does not mean all authors who
> > use the BSD
> > license concur. I would note as well that KDE developers are on public
> > record as not
> > objecting to distributing their code with Qt.
>
> This is an entirely different case. With code distributed under both the QPL
> (QT) and GPL (KDE) you have not just merged some distribution terms. The
> distribution terms are also in conflict with each other. (And one of the terms
> in the GPL explicitly says that you cannot distribute in that case.)
There is no conflict if the Qt code does not have to be licensed under the GPL.
Where is the conflict? Even Section 6 of the GPL says,
Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work
based on the Program), the recipient automatically
receives a license from the original licensor to copy,
distribute or modify the Program subject to these
terms and conditions.
Note that it says that the recipient only receives a license from the original
owner to copy, modify and distribute the *Program*, not the *work based on the
Program* (even though that phrase does appear earlier in the sentence). This is
obvious since the original author can't license the added stuff.
> Could you please contact the FSF or RMS about such licensing issues if you are
> not sure about them. They have legal advisors that can explain such things to
> you.
Please don't be condescending. I don't need anyone to explain it to me.
> I did when I had questions about combining BSD and GPL code and they
> explained all the issues to me.
I have heard all of the arguments, and am not convinced. To date nobody has
effectively refuted my arguments, however.
> For example why GPL code could not be combined
> with code licensed under the old BSD license which is possible with the current
> BSD license (the advertise clause is an added restriction which the GPL does
> not have).
Right, but it was combined anyway, for many years. And not every BSD code author
has changed the license -- UC has, I think.
> If something is unclear then they can ask for legal advise which is
> much better then speculating on some mailinglist.
I'm not speculating.
> You can also consult <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html>
> which explains what licenses are free and what licenses are compatible with
> the GPL. It also explains how to resolve some conflicts for your program when
> combining distribution terms of licenses not compatible with the GPL (such as
> the QPL) by adding appropriate notices.
>
> Hope that helps,
No, sorry, I think it doesn't help to use ad hominem attacks, such as saying
I don't understand, I am speculating, I should ask for advice, etc. Please
address the arguments, that could help.
> Mark
>
> P.S. Could you please not make your lines longer then 80 characters?
Sorry, this must be a bug in Netscape, I have it set to wrap at 72 chars. Do you
have a fix (besides not using Netscape :-) )?
Ciao,
Andreas
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