On 24/10/25 08:24PM, Страхиња Радић wrote:
> This has already been discussed:
>
> https://lists.suckless.org/dev/2306/35253.html
>
> and
>
> https://lists.suckless.org/dev/2306/35258.html
>
> In other words, when you license a work under GPL, you license **the
> whole work** under GPL. You cannot mix and match licenses. All the
> licenses of other parts must be "compatible" with the GPL in order for
> you to do so. What this means is that they must allow changing the
> license to GPL. As Marcus stated:
>
> > bar, Copyright Markus Wichmann, released under the terms of the GPL,
> > see file COPYING. Based on foo, Copyright Hiltjo Posthuma, released
> > under the terms of the MIT license, see file COPYING.foo.
>
> I have applied this in my programs using termbox library, for example:
>
> https://git.sr.ht/~strahinja/sled/tree/07daabdf9467ae8110f0b6cd2ec3aebc675c65bb/item/termbox.h
>
> > This file is based on the termbox2 TUI library, (c) 2021 termbox
> > developers.
> >
> > License notice from the original termbox2.h from the termbox2
> > repository follows:
>
> and then I include the entire text of the Expat ("MIT") license,
> fulfilling the terms of that license, while having my program **as a
> whole** licensed under GPL.
>
> However, the issue might arise from the term "substantial" and its
> interpretation. I believe that in the case of my programs using the
> termbox library it is clear that the library is not a substantial part
> of my program, and vice versa. In the case of hacked dwm, I'm not so
> sure.
>
Thank you for sharing the information. But what I can see from the mail
thread you shared is that people still disagreed at the end of the day.
I think Richard Stallman has closed that issue:
> In the combined program, the parts that came in under lax licenses still
> carry them, and the combined program as a whole carries the copyleft
> license.
Source:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-compatibility.en.html
As for your words:
> In other words, when you license a work under GPL, you license **the
> whole work** under GPL. You cannot mix and match licenses. All the
> licenses of other parts must be "compatible" with the GPL in order for
> you to do so.
I do license swm as a whole under GPL, but GPL doesn't prevent me from
making exceptions, so I can state that parts of the code are licensed
differently. (It's better if I don't have to, though, especially when
it's hard to make clear which parts are the exceptions.)
By the way, what I proposed at first was basing on some examples in
busybox. For instance, in include/libbbb.h in its source tree, there
is this comment:
> * Based in part on code from sash, Copyright (c) 1999 by David I. Bell
> * Permission has been granted to redistribute this code under GPL.
So I supposed it was simple to ask for permission of redistribution
under GPL. dwm developers appear to be quite unprepared for this
request, though. dwm copyright owners grant me the permission and I
keep a brief notice, shouldn't it just be like that? And I am open to
discussion about what to write in the notice.
> However, the issue might arise from the term "substantial" and its
> interpretation. I believe that in the case of my programs using the
> termbox library it is clear that the library is not a substantial part
> of my program, and vice versa. In the case of hacked dwm, I'm not so
> sure.
I don't quite understand what the concern is here?
Anyway, now what I am asking for is a different thing, which is putting
dwm's copyright list to the copyright list of GPL licensed swm, as if
swm has been jointly developed with them (which is true in a sense).
That will simplify the situation for possible future works basing on it
as only one license and no special notice is carried around.
That's not technically allowed by the Expat license, obviously, but I
am not asking permission from the license. If some dwm developers are
unhappy about that, I truly would like to learn the reason and see what
I could do differently.
Received on Sat Oct 26 2024 - 11:52:04 CEST