Re: GPL and other licences

[David Kastrup]

"Alfred M\. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org> writes:

>    With the new one (without advertising clause), relicensing under
>    the GPL is within the scope of the original license.
>
> Only the copyright holder has the legal right to _relicense_ the
> work.  I.e. change the license of the original copyright code.

Oh nonsense.  If the original license permits usage in a context with
different conditions, of course anybody can do so.  That is the
distinguishing feature of the BSD licenses as opposed to the GPL: the
freedom to distribute under unfree conditions.

>    > Only person who can re-license something is the copyright
>    > holder.
>
>    Wrong.  The only person who can give _permission_ to sublicense
>    is the copyright holder.
>
> Sub-license != _re_-license.
>
> Re-license ==> Changing the license.

Your point being what?  Whatever license you get the stuff under is
valid.

> Once again, only the copyright holder can change the license of the
> work, i.e. re-license it.  When you combine a modified-BSD-license
> (just so that David who doesn't understand assumptions grasps this)
> licensed, you are dual licensing the work, part of it is under the
> modifed-BSD license, and part of it is under the new license, for
> example the GPL.

Uh, Microsoft is relicensing a whole bunch of BSD software.  Quite a
bit from their network stack.  BSD is a source license.  Where is the
source for the BSD parts?  Obviously, this is not a dual-license
scheme.

> When you relicense a work, you can _remove_ the original license.
> This is not allowed with the modified-BSD license.

But the conditions of modified-BSD don't prohibit binary-only
distribution even though BSD is a source license.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum