Excuse my ignorance, but this open source licensing still confuses me. Can a distribution have both BSD-type and GPL-type licenses bundled together? Could there be a potential conflict in the mechanics of how both are used?
As I understand it (IANAL) you can include chunks of BSD licenced code in a GPL product & distribute it under the GPL provided its possible to tell which bits of code is covered by which license, so a downstream recipient could potentially extract just the BSD-licensed elements and redistribute them under BSD terms. Unlike the GPL, BSD is not fussy about whether the code is linked or "merely aggregated".
The can of worms is opened when people create derivative works that can't sensibly be separated into BSD and GPL parts and want the added "protection" of GPL to apply to "their" contibution - but trying to distribute the same bit of code under both licenses is nonsensical since either the extra obligations in the GPL would prevent recipients re-using the code under the terms of BSD or the more permissive BSD license would trump the more restrictive GPL. Pay a lawyer lots of cash to find out which would prevail in a dispute (then pay another one more to get the answer you wanted).
Fortunately, it looks as if saner minds have ignored the flames and got together and sorted it all out like sentient beings. Which is nice.
Licensing conflict? (Score:1)
Re:Licensing conflict? (Score:2)
As I understand it (IANAL) you can include chunks of BSD licenced code in a GPL product & distribute it under the GPL provided its possible to tell which bits of code is covered by which license, so a downstream recipient could potentially extract just the BSD-licensed elements and redistribute them under BSD terms. Unlike the GPL, BSD is not fussy about whether the code is linked or "merely aggregated".
The can of worms is opened when people create derivative works that can't sensibly be separated into BSD and GPL parts and want the added "protection" of GPL to apply to "their" contibution - but trying to distribute the same bit of code under both licenses is nonsensical since either the extra obligations in the GPL would prevent recipients re-using the code under the terms of BSD or the more permissive BSD license would trump the more restrictive GPL. Pay a lawyer lots of cash to find out which would prevail in a dispute (then pay another one more to get the answer you wanted).
Fortunately, it looks as if saner minds have ignored the flames and got together and sorted it all out like sentient beings. Which is nice.