Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote in another message: > Maybe my choice of words wasn't clear enough. The copyright notice > tells you that *alternatively* (this means if you don't want to use > the BSD) under the terms of the GNU GPL v2. > > Alternative implies choice, you choose which alternative you want.
As I wrote, you are absolutely correct. You are allowed to choose which license you use. BUT, the big BUT: You can't remove either of them and you will have to extend the same privileges to anyone you give the code on to. Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote in the other one: > On Sun, Sep 02, 2007 at 10:32:05AM +0100, Jeroen Massar wrote: >> Because of the choice between licenses you can either choose to adhere >> to the GPL (thus forcing you to open up your changes) > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > That is false, only if software is distributed. There is nothing false in that sentence. Indeed the 'when distributed' part might be good to add, but that happens, the second you start using the software outside your own organization/person/... thus most of the time and almost always. Unless you actually don't want the code to be used anywhere of course ;) But that is your problem. >> or alternatively >> you can choose the BSD and either give your patches back or not. > > Either give your patches back or not is also available on the GNU GPL as > long as you don't distribute software. Which thus means you can only per the license use the software yourself. Which is fine as nobody will use it then except you yourself and nobody will even know about the fact that you did patch it. The moment though that you do give it to somebody else you are forced to. >> Still, you can't remove either of the licenses, you have to pass on the >> rights you have gotten from the original copyright holder down to >> anybody else you are giving this too. > > Well, no. The original copyright holder gave you a choice: either BSD or GPL Yes, you have the choice, but you still can't remove either of them. Everyone who gets a copy of the work also gets the same rights. For that matter, the GPL license in there is pretty much useless as the BSD one allows full rights already. But that was exactly the point why these things are dual-licensed, to make all the GPL folks happy, while they simply don't understand that the code is dual-licensed and that the one with the least restrictions will be used by the people who want to use it. >> And especially if you would be >> giving the file down to the author only under GPL your are limiting >> their freedom, which is not the intent of the original copyright holder >> and also something you fortunately can't be doing. > > Tough luck. For you indeed, as your remove-the-bsd-license scheme doesn't work. >> If you don't like the licensing, then don't use the code at all, don't >> even look at it. > > Likewise, if you don't like the GPL, don't let it be a choice for other users. I simply slam BSD on everything that I want to make available so that people can use it however they want. GPL licensing has no advantages at all over BSD, it only has a disadvantage: that people can't use your code if they want to. > If your problem is that people don't give back I have no problem with people not contributing back, as I receive enough patches for my code, because people know they get credited properly for their work. I do have a problem with some people who think that they can change licenses which are not theirs to change. > go knock on certain vendors who > profit from OpenSSH without contributin anything back. Oh wait... they > don't have to, have they? :) As for commercial vendors, they have given enough kudos's over the years already for stuff that I have come up with, and why? well because they could in the first place actually use the code without having to worry that if their work one day would be distributed outside their offices that they would have to get rid of all that GPL stuff they build their products on soo much. Greets, Jeroen [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]
