On Sun, 28 Feb 2016 19:34:31 +1100 Ben Finney wrote: > Howdy all, Hello Ben! :-) [...] > By my understanding of copyright as the Debian project interprets the > conventions, a work subject to several sets of license conditions is > subject to the total set of restrictions. Indeed, this is also my own understanding of copyright laws. (With the usual warning that I am not a lawyer, and I do not speak on behalf of the Debian Project...) [...] > So is a work under conditions of the BSD 4-clause license with its > “obnoxious advertising clause”, or other license conditions with an > equivalent clause, DFSG-free? I think the answer is no. I disagree with you here: the 4-clause BSD license includes a clause that is indeed obnoxious, but *not* non-free. It meets the DFSG, as far as I can tell. It's not a recommended license, but it is acceptable for Debian main and has been actually accepted several times in Debian main, as far as I know. > > Does this mean the ‘lwipv6’ work is non-free with the inclusion of files > as per the example above? There are quite a few of them. I think the issue here is that the 4-clause BSD license is GPL-incompatible. I see three possible solution strategies (in order of decreasing desirability): A) the copyright holders for the 4-clause BSD licensed parts are contacted and asked to drop the obnoxious advertising clause for the code under consideration; if they agree, everything becomes fine and GPL-compatible or B) the 4-clause BSD licensed parts are independently reimplemented or replaced by suitable alternatives under GPL-compatible terms or C) the copyright holders for the GPLv2 licensed parts are contacted and asked to re-license their code under terms that are compatible with the various BSD licenses used in the work (including the 4-clause BSD license); if they agree, the incompatibilities are solved I hope this helps. Bye. -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/ There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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