Christopher Martin wrote: > I'd like to get a debian-legal opinion on a potential issue with the > kdeartwork package. debian-legal was CCed > (http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00235.html) on an earlier > discussion of the problem problem by Ben Burton, but didn't receive much > feedback from this list. Thus I'm raising the issue again. > > Ben Burton summarized the problem as follows: > > --- > The problem here is a potential conflict between GPL and > BSD-with-advertising-clause; see > http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=109779477208076&w=2 for my > original post. The question now is whether the advertising clause can be > assumed to be rescinded. > > The UC Regents rescinded the advertising clause in 1999, but the vm_random.c > used in kdeartwork appears to have been taken and modified from BSD before > then. > > Certainly the change in 1999 applies to BSD software distributed since then, > as evidenced by the fact that they removed the advertising clause from the > corresponding source files. But it's not obvious to me that the change > applies to software distributed beforehand (such as random.c from which > vm_random.c was modified, in kdeartwork). There's also the trouble that the > license they are modifying in your link is similar to but not the same as > the license on vm_random.c (presumably because vm_random.c was from a much > older BSD). > > And aside from this, there's the problem that vm_random.c was modified since > it was taken from BSD, and the modifications are presumably also under the > BSD-with-advertising-clause (since that's what vm_random's copyright notice > says). In this case, my understanding is that UC Berkeley cannot change the > licensing for someone else's modifications. > --- README.Impt.License.Change has come up here before, and the conclusion was that it does retroactively rescind the clause for all software copyrighted by UC Berkeley, including older versions. However, it certainly can't affect software copyrighted by others; for such software, you need to get permission from the copyright holders. - Josh Triplett
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