On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Hamish wrote:
[sorry for the cross-posting, I'm casting the idea net wide] is this license GPL2 compatible? is this license DFSG compatible? * "There is no warranty whatsoever. Use at your own risk. This code may be freely redistributed under the condition that the copyright notices are not removed. You may distribute modified versions of this code UNDER THE CONDITION THAT THIS CODE AND ANY MODIFICATIONS MADE TO IT IN THE SAME FILE REMAIN UNDER COPYRIGHT OF FOOCORP, BOTH SOURCE AND OBJECT CODE ARE MADE FREELY AVAILABLE WITHOUT CHARGE, AND CLEAR NOTICE IS GIVEN OF THE MODIFICATIONS." the bit I am concerned about is the effect of "all your modifications are copyright us". (which is fine with me, but is it fine with the GPL?)
Perhaps they are trying to say that someone can't just make a few trivial changes and then claim copyright on the whole code. If someone adds a substantial new section I can't see how the copyright would "remain" with the original authors - the person who added the new bits would hold the copyright by default and if it was going to belong to anyone else it would need to be explicitly assigned. And this could be easily worked around by adding any new bit to a new file.
I'd be more concerned though about the requirement to make source and object code freely available without charge. That seems to conflict with the fact the the GPL allows people to sell software released under it. It even allows charging a nominal fee to distribute the source code IIRC. So I think that would be the main conflicting issue and the copyright one seems more to me a question of poor wording.
Just my opinion though Paul