[Squeakfoundation] re: Allow MIT-licensed code to be partof"SqueakOfficial"?

Ian Piumarta ian.piumarta at inria.fr
Mon Nov 17 10:08:31 CET 2003


On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Marcus Denker wrote:

> The Question is: Can the RB-AST *replace* the Node-classes in the
> image, if it is MIT-Licensed?

As I understand it, the MIT license says: "Do absolutely anything you want
with this code, except claim copyright ownership on it".

Most importantly, MIT is not "infectious" in the way that the GPL is.
You can include all, or any part, of any MIT-licensed code in anything you
like, provided you keep the boilerplate intact on that code (a class
comment would do) in any source distribution you choose to make.  I cannot
see any incompatibility with SqueakL there at all.  The effects of the MIT
license do not "leak" out of any of the code you reuse, and whatever
effect the SqueakL might have on the MIT-licensed code is completely moot,
since the MIT license explicitly gives you permission to do *anything* at
all (including relicensing it) -- provided only that the original
boilerplate remains in the MIT-derived code.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.  :)

Regards,
Ian

PS: Witness the kerberos code in the Linux kernel, which is MIT-licensed
    and then relicensed (implicitly) as GPL (merely by being linked with
    other parts of the Linux kernel).  Other parts of Linux (device
    drivers, in particular) do the same with (lots of) BSD-licensed code.
    <ObGripe> (This is really unfair, since the BSD people cannot reuse
    Linux code in the same manner.  GPL is called "free" software, but
    using it can be very, very expensive -- think "clean room
    reimplementation" for anything that isn't itself GPLed.) </ObGripe>


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