Re: Combining GPL and BSD/CeCILL/whatever
> Please try http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html first.
I have, and it didn't really help -- see below. Moreover, there were no
contact information for license questions and even if there were, I think the
answers might be too GPL centric and/or biased.
> I think you need to ask: What is copyright? [...]
> So, you can license your copyright, the result of any creative
> work you put into the software, with any compatible license,
> but the copyright to the original work remains under its original
> licence, no matter what you do.
I know what copyright is, and I think it inself is quite clear a consept.
However, if I've understood correctly, a "license" is not a separate legal
entity but an *agreement*, which just happens to be about the conditions for
allowing "the licensor" to exercise some of the rights reserved for the
original copyright holder. What makes them so tricky is that you can agree to
do (almost) anything in exchange for those rights (payments, not suing the
author for patents, obligations to paint your house black or whatever).
> See the GPL FAQ question about extracting a public
> domain part from a GPL-covered work. I think that covers your
> next two questions too.
Mm, yes. It clearly applies to otherwise licensed code in addition to public
domain stuff.
However, my main question was: "what/which license(s) a combined work should
be distributed with and how to document it". The GPL FAQ says:
"The GPL says that the whole combined program has to be released under
the GPL. So your module has to be available for use under the GPL."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ??
...but it also says:
"The GPL permits such a combination provided it
is released under the GNU GPL."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This same issue concerns pretty much all licenses that require the derived
works to be "available for use" or "released under" the same license. Still,
the most important special case -- into which I'd like an answer -- is:
If I have a package that combines MIT/BSD-new code and GPL code, shall I
include both license texts or simply replace the BSD text (save the
copyright notice) with a GPL blurp?
(And in case that's too easy, what if the previously MIT/BSD'd code is mixed
inseparably with the GPL'd code?)
- Jarno
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