is it a GPL violation or not ?

[Simo Sorce]

On Tue, 2002-08-27 at 12:46, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> >Actually, anyone can take a project with a laxer licence, and put his/ 
> >her changes under the GPL.
> 
> This is right, but GPL is incompatible with the BSD license.

No license is incompatible with new BSD by definition. BSD does not
require any sort of compatibility.

> You are not allowed to remove the BSD license and to replace it with the GPL.

And you are not required to do so, to distribute a derived work under
the terms of the GPL. The GPL does not require you to change the
license, only that every part of the program has a compatible license.

> 1)	You are not allowed to remove the BSD copyright notice

Nobody ask you to do so, and nobody can under the law anyway (except the
author).

> 2)	BSD forces you to tell your users that you did incorporate code
> 	from a specific Author (the one who wrote the BSD'd code).

That was the former BSD license, not the new one, and GPL requires too
that copyright holders need to be listed.

> 3)	I doubt that the original Author would like to see his
> 	code published under a less free (in this case the GPL) license 
> 	than he originally used.

That's an author problem, as he choose a license that can be
incorporated in totally non free programs.

If the programmer really do not want freedom be taken off, than he
really should choose GPL. 

> However, there is no problem to use *BSD licensed code from a GPLd project.

True (for the new BSD).

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce - simo.sorce at xsec.it
Xsec s.r.l.
via Durando 10 Ed. G - 20158 - Milano
tel. +39 02 2399 7130 - fax: +39 02 700 442 399
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 232 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/attachments/20020827/ff78a3b7/attachment.sig>