Re: ASL2 and artistic compatibility
Andres Salomon wrote:
> It would appear that the new upstream release of libapache2-mod-perl2 has
> been relicensed; from the ASL 1.1 to the ASL 2.0. As has already been
> discussed, the ASL (both 1.1 and 2.0) and GPL are
> incompatible (at least, the FSF claims they are). What has previously
> been used w/ modperl (1 and 2, under the ASL 1.1) has been perl's Artistic
> license. The question is, does the change to ASL 2.0 introduce any
> incompatibilities with the Artistic license? Is it safe to upgrade
> libapache2-mod-perl2 to the latest version?
No idea; we'll have to look at both clause-by-clause and I'm not up to it
today. :-)
>
> As a side note, there was a d-l thread in Feb. about the Apache group and
> the FSF talking about resolving their disagreement regarding the patent
> termination clause in the ASL 2.0 rendering both licenses incompatible.
> Does anyone know if an agreement has been reached?
No, nobody knows. :-)
The ASL 2.0 was designed specifically to be GPL-compatible. The
incompatibilty believed present by the FSF is very subtle; they believe
that the GPL grants *implicit* patent licenses and that the ASL's
revocation of explicit patent licenses under certain circumstances is
therefore an additional restriction.
There is, as far as I can tell, no consensus on whether the GPL in fact does
grant implicit patent licenses, or indeed whether the revocation of the
explicit patent licenses in the ASL would also revoke such implicit patent
licenses.
--
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
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