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Re: Question about the old BSD license and GPL (gtkipmsg)



On Fri, Jun 15, 2001 at 04:10:24PM +0900, Junichi Uekawa wrote:
> Now, IP Messenger (the original program) was released under 
> the old BSD license, and xipmsg follows that. The latest version 
> of IP Messenger is released under the newer BSD license.
>
> gtkipmsg is a derivative version of xipmsg, and it claims that
> it is distributed under the terms of GPL2.
> 
> I see that at www.gnu.org, the old BSD license is not compatible with 
> GPL, but I cannot understand why.

The old BSD license had an (unenforcable in the U.S.) clause restricting
the way that people talked about the software (in advertising).
That restriction conflicted with the GPL (which specified no other
restrictions).

> I do not really understand the reasoning behind it being
> non-compatible, and I am not really sure gtkipmsg would be qualified
> as DFSG-free.

Write the authors of xpimsg and ask them to use the current IP Messenger
license?

-- 
Raul



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