Re: dual-licensing question
Dean Landolt <dean@deanlandolt.com> writes:
> I was hoping to get a clarification on the implications of dual
> licensing.
There's no canonical definition of the term that I'm aware of.
> Many developers are under the impression that with dual-licensed
> software you can choose which license's terms you abide by.
Yes; more precisely, a multi-license grant for a work means that the
recipient can choose which of multiple license terms they received the
work under.
Having chosen, they are then bound by those license terms. Of course,
the choice is often not explicitly made until a question arises of an
action that could violate the terms of one of the licenses.
This is consistent with the article and references at
<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-licensing>.
> Some contend that when redistributing a project released under, for
> instance, BSD and LGPL licenses, one must abide by the terms of both
> licenses.
That's an unusual interpretation, and is not coherent in the frequent
case where the licenses are incompatible +IBQ- that is, where satisfying
the combined set of license terms is impossible. In such cases, that
interpretation would result in no effective license.
The easiest example of this <URL:http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/> is
perhaps one of the earliest well-known multi-licensed free software
works: the Mozilla code base is licensed under the MPL and the GPL
(and later the LGPL); the MPL is mutually incompatible with the other
licenses.
> Are there any restrictions placed on users redistributing software
> that was dual-licensed, or is dual-licensing specifically to address
> license compatibility (like GPLv2/ASF) and market segregation issues
> as wikipedia suggests?
I don't really understand what is being asked here; can you rephrase
or expand?
--
+AFw- +IBw-My girlfriend has a queen sized bed; I have a court jester |
`+AFw- sized bed. It's red and green and has bells on it, and the ends |
_o__) curl up.+IB0- +IBQ-Steven Wright |
Ben Finney
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