On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 06:45, Colin Watson wrote: > On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 02:51:42AM -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: > > It's not entirely clear whether or not the copyright holders may > > release new versions of the software under a more restrictive license, > > making the non-free fork of tuxracer legally questionable as far as I > > can tell. > > The copyright holders may always do this at their discretion, since the > authority to issue licences rests entirely with them. If I release a > piece of software under licence X, I am not bound by the terms of > licence X. The same applies to a group of copyright holders if they all > agree. > > IANAL either, but this is my fairly firm understanding of what a licence > means. > > -- > Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk] A license is a permit to the one issued the license a collection of privileges to make use of the item as per the terms of the license. It does not preclude different types of licenses or outright grants of rights. It is similar to how, with roadways, you may have a general license that gives you the privilege to use cars and trucks on the roadways subject to certain rules. A police officer, ambulance paramedic or firefighter likely has a different license that gives them additional privileges to drive vehicles for emergency purposes in certain ways, including being able to direct the clearing of traffic so that the emergency vehicle can pass through. Differing software licenses are not dissimilar in concept. Even with commercial software, you will find a consumer license, and a paragraph or two at the end regarding US Government rights, partly due to special needs and/or desires of the US Government or parts thereof to have additional control and rights that otherwise would not be traditionally part of a license. This is the "alternate license" for US govenrment terms. That said, I have long thought that with the GPL, if I was to produce some code released under it, I cannot, regardless of how valuable of a contribution this clause might be, require that any extensions of the code be done in a way that it improves the code and does not introduce viruses or worms. I could alternately license it that way, but it would not, IIUC, be DFSG-Free. -- Mark L. Kahnt, FLMI/M, ALHC, HIA, AIAA, ACS, MHP ML Kahnt New Markets Consulting Tel: (613) 531-8684 / (613) 539-0935 Email: kahnt@hosehead.dyndns.org
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