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Re: Looking for an open source license..


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: Looking for an open source license..
Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 22:15:33 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux)

"Amanjit Gill" <amanjit.singh.gill@googlemail.com> writes:

> - I really like the GNU GPL and LGPL for software that corresponds
> to infrastructure (i.e. things that should be provided on any
> system, and must be "free" and interoperatable because it is so easy
> for software to be incompatible (you only need to change one byte).

That is the wrong reason to like the GPL/LGPL, since both of them
guarantee the freedom to change the code.

> - I pretty much dislike the GPL (and LGPL because of the clause that
> you can "relicense" the work under the GPL) for everything else,
> i.e.  Applications.

Your likings and dislikings are somewhat peculiar.

> - I am looking for a BSD-style license, that is as BSD-compatible as
> possible but practically prohibits "relicensing" the work under the
> GPL or GPL-compatible licenses.

This is nonsense.  The whole purpose of BSD-style licenses is to
_permit_ relicensing, as proprietary, or as GPL or other.

> I basically found bits of code that was initially released under a
> BSD license, but somehow years afterwards someone made a GPL version
> of that software (same name, but only bugfixes or compiler changes
> in the code). I want to prevent this side-effect in an open source
> software I am about to write.
>
> Any Ideas?

You need to get your ideas sorted out.  The purpose of the BSD license
is to _permit_ relicensing to different licenses (including
proprietary licenses).  The purpose of the GPL is to _not_ permit
relicensing to different licenses.

If you _don't_ want people to be able to change the associated
freedoms in relicensing, you need to use the _GPL_, not a BSD license.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum


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