Re-licensing of GPLv3
Re-licensing of GPLv3
Posted Mar 29, 2007 9:43 UTC (Thu) by jec (subscriber, #5803)Parent article: The third GPLv3 draft
As anybody knows, taking BSD/Apache code and relicensing it to GLPv2 is OK.
Taking GPLv3 code and relicensing it to GPLv2 would be forbidden, that's the heart of the license.
But would taking GPLv2 code and relicense it to GPLv3 be ok or not?
That would mean that a Linux Kernel in GPLv3 would be possible.
Posted Mar 29, 2007 12:23 UTC (Thu)
by lysse (guest, #3190)
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-- lysse, who is not a laywer
Posted Mar 29, 2007 12:32 UTC (Thu)
by knewt (subscriber, #32124)
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Posted Mar 29, 2007 15:58 UTC (Thu)
by southey (guest, #9466)
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Posted Mar 30, 2007 1:19 UTC (Fri)
by sepreece (guest, #19270)
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Posted Mar 29, 2007 17:47 UTC (Thu)
by edgewood (subscriber, #1123)
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What someone other than the copyright holder can do is combine BSD and GPL2 code and distribute the resulting combined work as GPL2, since the BSD license allows you to add additional restrictions, and doesn't contain any restrictions that aren't allowed by the GPL2. Note that the original GPL2 section of the combined work remains under the GPL2, and the original BSD section remains under BSD. (Apache is a different story, it's at best unclear whether the Apache Public License v2 and the GPL2 are compatible in this way: the FSF says they aren't, the Apache Foundation says that it's unclear.)
No one other than the copyright holder can combine GPL2-only and GPL3-only code and release the combined work under either license, since each license requires that modified versions of code released under that license be distributed with the same license. That's why the Linux kernel's "GPL2-only" sections are such a big deal: as long as there is GPL2-only code in the kernel, it can't also incorporate GPL3-only code.
I think it might fall foul of the "no additional restrictions" clause. Which isn't a problem with code which retains the "or any later version" language in the preamble, but since Linux doesn't...Re-licensing of GPLv3
You can't actually take GPLv2 code and relicense it to GPLv3, as the two licenses are incompatible. However, most (but certainly not all) GPLv2 software has this bit of text at the top of its license:
Re-licensing of GPLv3
you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
The Linux Kernel is one piece of software which explicitly doesn't have that, thereby (deliberately) tying it to v2 only.
As anybody knows, taking BSD/Apache code and relicensing it to GLPv2 is OK.Re-licensing of GPLv3
Actually this is generally false. The original code still has the original license and you remain bound by those terms of that license unless you are the sole owner of the code covered by that license. Any relicensing of any code where you are not the sole owner of the copyright violates copyright law.
Right. This is an important distinction that sometimes gets lost. You may be able to redistribute under a license other than the original license, if they're compatible (the original terms are not violated by the terms of the license you use). You're still distributing under the terms of the original license, just in conjunction with something else with compatible terms. The licensing never changes unless the authors specifically allow it.Re-licensing of GPLv3
As others have pointed out, the only party who can "re-license" code is the original copyright holder.
Re-licensing of GPLv3