This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 4, 2007 16:50 UTC (Tue) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right by JoeBuck
Parent article: Relicensing: what's legal and what's right

I think Theo's point is that the spirit of the BSD licence is more important than the letter. Yes, it doesn't use legal force to compel you to share your code back, but the spirit of BSD suggests that you should do so. Interestingly, RMS has said the same thing: the exact legal meaning of the GPL is less important than its spirit, which is that you should share code with others and not impose restrictions on users.

The position that dual-licensed files must 'always' remain dual-licensed after making changes seems a bit untenable though. If that were the case, then any dual-licensed BSD+GPL code incorporated into OpenBSD would have to remain dual-licensed forever as well. This would arguably mean that proprietary vendors would no longer be able to strip out the GPL and include the code in proprietary software. But I fear we are getting into legal nonsense land here.

The commonly accepted meaning of dual licensing is a disjunction. You can distribute this under licence A, or licence B, at your option. (Or continue distributing under A+B.) It's unfortunate that the OpenBSD people think it means something else. To avoid misunderstanding we may need a new term to mean dual-licensed-choose-either-yes-really-I-mean-it.

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This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 4, 2007 20:25 UTC (Tue) by sepreece (guest, #19270) [Link] (2 responses)

"The position that dual-licensed files must 'always' remain dual-licensed after making changes seems a bit untenable though. "

I think the reality is more like "The original file and the code it contains always remain dual-licensed." Once you modify the file, the resulting file is licensed under a combination of the original dual-licensing and whatever license you put on your own modifications. Depending on your choice, this could even make the modified file undistributable, even by you (if your license terms aren't compatible with either of the original licenses).

Personally, I would be happiest ethically with retaining the original dual licensing for any modifications. Anything else just seems rude.

Then what's the point of dual licensing?

Posted Sep 5, 2007 19:02 UTC (Wed) by mrshiny (guest, #4266) [Link]

If it's unethical to release changes to a dual-licensed file using only one license, what's the point of HAVING a dual-license in the first place? Seems to me the original author is saying "Take your pick", not creating some super-license that contains all the terms of the individual licenses. And IANAL but as far as I'm concerned if a file is available under two licenses you can use the privileges of one license to strip away the other license. The original code would still be dual-licensed but your modified version would be under whichever license you chose.

This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 6, 2007 9:50 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

But the original author stated his intent that it is choose and pick. (And the FreeBSD folks did so, too.) And in law, intent counts a lot.

That said, I also think that Linux changes to the drivers should be licensed BSD+GPL, in respect for the original authors' work. It's not a legal thing, it's a moral obligation, IMHO.

This is one of the rare occasions where I think Theo is right

Posted Sep 4, 2007 21:35 UTC (Tue) by xtifr (guest, #143) [Link]

> I think Theo's point is that the spirit of the BSD licence is more important than the letter.

Then how come they don't complain when people release binaries with improvements that will never benefit the BSD community? Frankly, I love BSD (both the license and the system); I grew up in Berkeley and have many friends in the BSD community, but the rabid anti-GPL fanaticism of <em>some</em> members of the BSD community has always set my teeth on edge. I mean, even if you <em>do</em> buy the theory that GPL software is not truly free, how is making source code available for inspection (if nothing else) worse than not doing so?