Re: FRR package in Debian violates the GPL licence

[Giacomo <giacomo@tesio.it>]

On March 18, 2019 4:44:09 PM UTC, Paul Jakma <paul@jakma.org> wrote:
>On Mon, 18 Mar 2019, Giovanni Mascellani wrote:
>
>> I think I have seen MIT/BSD pieces of code in most of the GPL
>projects 
>> I have looked into.
>
>Nothing in the advice I have received precludes the happy co-existence 
>of MIT/BSD code with GPL code in the same project.
>
>The cases you have in mind, presumably, are those where BSD/MIT code has 
>been imported but /not/ modified and extended such that that code 
>derives from GPL licensed code.

I've got similar legal advice several years ago in a totally equivalent situation.

If the code X cannot even be written without the preexisting code Y,  and the code Y is under GPLv2 (that was the case back then), the copyright holder of X cannot distribute the code under a different license.

By trying to do so, the copyright holder on Y would terminate all his license on X but he could still further distribute Y, but only under GPLv2 as Y IS a Derived Work of X.

This however would not affect any third party who received X and Y and was compliant with GPLv2 on X+Y and on Y itself (on this Paul's advice doesn't match the one I did received).



My interpretation of this last advice is that, even if the author of Y do not distribute Y anymore since his license on X terminate, once it exists, anyone with a copy can still distribute it under the proper GPLv2 license.


Another thing the lawyer said back then is that if the violating party does not recognise a license violation Termination of the License can only be enforced in court.

This means that, in practice, both FRRouting and Debian CAN fix the issue before being sued.
In case of a process, the faster the fix, the better the outcome.


Your mileage may vary. ;-)


Giacomo