[Savannah-help-public] [sr #105871] How do I change the License of a project?

[Sylvain Beucler]

Follow-up Comment #3, sr #105871 (project administration):

> copyright 1991, all rights reserved.
> You can use this code as long as my name stays with it.
> 
> (This seems incompatible to me).

Hmmm, yes, unfortunately. "Keeping the name" is compatible (you must
reproduce the copyright notices anyway, as stated in the GNU GPL) - but the
author only say "use" which is vague. It should be "use, modify and
distribute" :/

> Here is an example of a copyright notice
> that is somewhat ambitious: 

The GNU GPL says:
"If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may
choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation."

So there's no problem with that one.

> Copyright (C) 2002 Piotr Kucharski
> BSD licence applies. Yeah!

Indeed that's ambiguous.

But well, http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/license.html says that in 1999 UCB
made a global license change from original BSD to modified BSD. This code from
2002 is not precising exactly which BSD license it sues so arguably this can
be interpreted at "modified BSD".
Contacting the author won't hurt though.

> However, what does it mean that its not compatible
> with the GPL? Is it if I change that particular file,
> I cannot use the GPL, or what?

When you combine several pieces of code released under different licenses to
create a "combined" (or "derived") work, all licenses need to be compatible
between each others.

The GNU project maintains a list of licenses and their compatibility with the
GNU GPL, check http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html for details.


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