On Tue, Aug 18, 2020 at 09:17:36PM +0200, Marek Mosiewicz wrote: > Hello, hello > I'm just curious. According to general perception BSD, MIT or Apache2 > licenses are GPL3 compatible. There are many fine resources out there for you to read. I'd recommend [1], [2] and [3] for starters. Yes, [1] is gnu.org: one might think they have a bias -- still it's well structured and worth a read. > Is it true ? I'm not lawyer, but with GPL requirement to cover whole > combined work with GPL it seems to be not so obvious. The thing is: BSD, MIT and friends allow you to combine the stuff with any other program and relicense the result as you wish (e.g. proprietary). This includes a GPL work. The result is, then, GPL. > That especially true for GPL3 where combined work must to be covered > with GPL3, what means has requirements for patents used by work. That only means you lose the protection afforded by GPL3 once you assert patent rights (e.g. by submarine patents). Remember -- GPL /grants/ you permissions to do things which, by default, would be forbidden. So it only can revoke those things, if you are in breach of contract. > Neither BSD nor MIT licenses have any clue about author patents used in > work. It seems obvious that you have patent grant from author as long > as you use or modify BSD/MIT software, Is it? It will strongly depend on jurisdiction, I guess. > but nothing about any other use > of patents. Why should the patent grant be tied to the license of the end software? Now, if the license explicitly states so, perhaps. > I'm not sure for Apache2. There is patent grant from contributors, but > I do not see patent grant from copyright holder (who can be not > contributor, but also have patents) The patent grant in Apache2 is why the FSF recommends this one among the non-copyleft [4] licenses. Cheers [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility#Compatibility_of_FOSS_licenses [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_and_open-source_software_licences [4] I very much prefer this term to the "permissive" you used in the subject: permissive is ambiguous. Permissive to whom? Users? Programmers? Distributors? - t
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