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Re: Licensing question about the BSD


From: Bruce Lewis
Subject: Re: Licensing question about the BSD
Date: 04 Aug 2005 09:43:26 -0400
User-agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3

Isaac <isaac@latveria.castledoom.org> writes:

> On 03 Aug 2005 13:44:55 -0400, Bruce Lewis <brlspam@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Alexander Terekhov <terekhov@web.de> writes:
> > 
> >> Drivative works of BSD'd code (derivative literary works [modulo the AFC
> >> test] under copyright law) are subject to BSD.
> > 
> > That's really interesting.  [...]
> 
> Derivative works have separate copyrights, but distributing an inseparable 
> derivative or collective work, such as a program in object form requires 
> complying with the copyright/license provisions of the original material.

I think you and I are reading "subject to BSD" differently.

If you read Alexander's statement as "Authors of derivative works of
BSD'd code must comply with the BSD license" then his statement is true.

In the context of the question, he seemed to be saying "Derivative works
are automatically licensed under the terms of the BSD license."  That's
not true.  Only the original code is, and the author of the derivative
work is under no obligation to identify what is original code and what
isn't.  You need to find the original code to know that.  So basically
the presence of the BSD license in a derivative work doesn't give you
anything if there's an additional non-libre license.  Excepting of course
a hint that there's a libre alternative out there.

However, if you see the GPL in a derivative work, you know you have the
right to copy/adapt the code.  For the author of the derivative to
lawfully incorporate GPLed code, he must license the derivative under
the same terms.  If he licenses it under the same terms, you have the
right to copy/adapt under the same terms.  If he does not license it
under the same terms, then he has no copyright protection; the only
copyright in force is for the original GPLed code.  Copy/adapt all you
want.

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