Re: Recently released QPL

[John Hasler <john@dhh.gt.org>]

Jonathan quotes someone whose name has been lost in the mists of time:
> If people want to know why I consider the "GPL virus" a bad thing, there
> is the answer.  If everything that links with the GPL _MUST BE_ 100% GPL,

Everything that links with the GPL does not have to be GPL.

> then there are serious licensing problems with every single Linux
> distibution if no other reason than because people have in-discriminantly
> used BSDish code (sans advertising clause) within GPL code.

>From the GPL:

    b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in 
    whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
    part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third
    parties under the terms of this License.

Nothing in the modified BSD license conflicts with this.

Assume that I take a few hundred lines from an X server, a few hundred
lines from emacs, add a few thousand lines of my own code, and decide to
publish the resulting program.  It is a derivative of both the X server and
emacs, and so I must have permission from both XFree and the FSF to
distribute it.  The license attached to the X server tells me XFree's
conditions, while the GPL tells me the FSF's.  Since neither requires
anything that the other forbids, I can go ahead and release my work under
the terms of the GPL as the FSF requires.  If either license did require
anything forbidden by the other, I would have to negotiate a new license
with one of the two copyright owners.
-- 
John Hasler
john@dhh.gt.org (John Hasler)
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI