Re: Recently released QPL
> As I'm sure you know, it's perfectly legal to combine GPL and X and BSD
> code into the same program.
yes, but one has to change the license of the final work in ways that
authors are sometimes unwilling and/or unable (ie the original author does
not exist/cannot be found) to do, for one reason or another; this causes
some amount of loss of sharing and wasted effort when things clash due to
licensing issues that most everyone agrees are pretty stupid.
> However, what I believe you're pointing out is that: because the DFSG
> doesn't provide exactly the same guidelines as the GPL, it's possible to
> have DFSG code which can't be combined in the same program as the GPL.
> [Then again, the same goes for other combinations of DFSG licenses.]
pretty much, yes. and as i have pointed out i'm picking on one particular
combination of licence, because it's <a> the most glaring/popular/etc., and
<b> the first one i thought of.
> It's probably worth pointing out that DFSG was never intended to make
> sure that all debian programs could be combined arbitrarily to create
> new programs. Otherwise there are some significant programs we'd have
> to kick out of main.
> Basically, I think you want to derive something with the transitive
> ["viral"] qualities of the GPL which still allows any DFSG code to
> be combined with it. But this can never work because, for example,
> the DFSG does not prohibit a license from having a clause of the form:
> No other licenses may be applied to this program.
>
> So you'd have to derive a new DFSG as well, to make this work.
well, it doesn't have to be perfect; i'd just like one that's a little more
tolerant. if there are compatibility issues on the other side i can't really
do much about it. to paraphrase a certain document by a recently-discussed
author, i don't want to solve all the world's problems, only some of them. ;p
--phouchg
"Reasoning is partly insane" --Rush, "Anagram (for Mongo)"
PGP 5.0 key (0xE024447449) at http://cif.rochester.edu/~phouchg/pgpkey.txt
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