Re: [dev] [license] gpl issues

From: Markus Wichmann <nullplan_AT_gmx.net>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2023 19:05:09 +0200

Am Tue, Jun 20, 2023 at 04:44:44PM +0200 schrieb Страхиња Радић:
> On second thought, I think Markus may be right. It is GPL which would forbid
> non-compatible sublicensing (which is changing the license of derived works
> *completely*), not Expat. Under Expat, you can sublicense *your copy/fork* to
> any license, including the proprietary licenses. (This is one of the reasons
> why I think that GNU GPL is superior--it stays true to the original intent.)
>

Exactly.

> Of course, the copyright holder(s), or original authors, can always choose to
> retain the original license on their software, or relicense their work in any
> way they choose (IMHO this wouldn't retroactively impact the forks made when
> the program's license allowed free-software-licensed forks).
>

That does seem to be the case. When Jörg Schilling changed the license
of his cdrtools to CDDL, the Debian project created cdrkit based on a
fork of the most recent GPL licensed cdrtools version, just to avoid
issues. Of course this lead to patches from Jörg not being picked up in
cdrkit and vice versa.

Ciao,
Markus
Received on Tue Jun 20 2023 - 19:05:09 CEST