Chris Travers wrote:
>On 8/23/07, Tobia Conforto <tobia.conforto linux.it> wrote:
> Chris Travers wrote:
> > Tobia Conforto wrote:
> > > If I take a MS-PL file (not mine) and a GPL
file, combine
them into
> > > a derived work and release it as GPL, the GPL
requires the
whole
> > > work (including the MS-PL part) to be
released with
permissions
> > > exactly equal to the GPL
> >
> > Read section 7 of the GPL v3 again, or section 2
of the GPL
v2.
> > Additional permissions are not prohibited.
However the MS-PL
is not
> > compatible with the GPL v2 on other grounds.
> >
> > The GPL v3 also allows for reasonable legal
notices to be
included, so
> > the requirement that source code be identified as
being still
under
> > the MS-PL does not seem to be a problem.
>
> You are right, I was reading the GPL wrong! (It's so
long...
Actually, Tobia, your original position is correct (at least
it
is consistent with most people's reading of GPL, and other
copyleft
licenses such as EPL and CDDL). Copyleft licenses as a
group all
insist that derivatives must be licensed under their terms
and
conditions. If they did not have this characeristic of
license
"stickiness," it would be trivially easy to defeat
the requirement
to share source, i.e., the reason people choose to apply
copyleft
licenses in the first place, by purporting to relicense
derived code
under a non-copyleft license.
Of course, it is exactly this property of license
"stickiness" that
makes most copyleft licenses (I have to say IMO
unfortunately)
incompatible
with each other.
MS-PL is an odd duck in that it is a non-copyleft license
with a
similar "license stickiness" clause which forbids
relicensing.
This makes it, too, incompatible with copyleft licenses.
Andy Wilson
Intel open source technology center
|