Making the GPL more scary [LWN.net]

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 21, 2018 18:01 UTC (Sun) by IanKelling (subscriber, #89418)
In reply to: Making the GPL more scary by armijn
Parent article: Making the GPL more scary

> make software that I don't own the copyrights of (and cannot relicense) available under their license? That's just impossible

I think you are mistaken. Making available under a different license is allowed by permissive licenses. That is part of their attraction: you can distribute the permissive licensed code under a proprietary license as part of some product. Sometimes this is referred to as "sublicensing".

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Making the GPL more scary

Posted Oct 21, 2018 19:34 UTC (Sun) by armijn (subscriber, #3653) [Link] (1 responses)

No, I am not mistaken. If this license would extend to for example the Linux kernel for example I cannot relicense that, because I don't own the copyrights for that and the license for the Linux kernel doesn't allow relicensing, as it is not a permissive license.

Also, regarding permissive licenses: the original code will still be subject to the license conditions such as for example outlined in the BSD license (copyright notices).

Making the GPL more scary

Posted Nov 1, 2018 8:40 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Pretty much NO licences allow relicensing. They allow distributing under a different licence, which isn't the same thing.

If I take a BSD project, rewrite some of it, and redistribute, then it's perfectly okay to do so under the GPL. That doesn't change the licence of the code I borrowed - that *was* BSD, is *still* BSD, and will *remain* BSD. It's just that the project is now GPL and the safest option for recipients (unless they want a ton of work) is to abide by the GPL.

Cheers,
Wol