Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: GPL compatibility

Author:Jacob Levy
Posted:9/8/2000; 9:46:34 PM
Topic:Guido and Richard
Msg #:21042 (In response to 21035)
Prev/Next:21041 / 21043

Warning: major licensing rant follows.

New BSD + GPL == GPL?

In other words, if I combine a piece of GPL'd code with another piece of code thats under the new BSD license, do I get a GPL'd piece of combined code? My reading of the above is "yes".

This is what doesn't make sense to me about the GPL. Who is it to tell me what license my combined product is going to be governed by? What the heck? In practice this has in the past prevented me from creating derived works, because it was predetermined for me what the license would be. Thanks but no thanks.

Please tell me I'm wrong. I'd love to be wrong on this.

Two anecdotes:

Expat used to be under MPL or GPL (you choose, no idea how he managed the conflict). Users wouldn't use it in their own products because it infected them with GPL. What if they wanted to create a commercial product, or if they just wanted to keep that option? Expat is now under the new BSD license on www.sourceforge.net.

I wanted to combine a Tk tree widget from D. Richard Hipp under GPL with my own code. After a few back and forths, Richard said "why don't you release your app under whatever license and ship my widget under separate GPL license?". Checking with the license police on slashdot yielded the answer that that's impossible. If my other piece of code depends on Richard's tree widget, it too must be GPL'd.



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