FAQ section on licenses

Cees de Groot cg at cdegroot.com
Wed Feb 20 07:11:53 UTC 2002


Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu> said:
>Hmm. Is this true? "I hereby license blah blah to do whatever I, as
>copyright holder, can do with this code, including the right to
>redistrbute under another license" Oh, and if I make the license
>irrevokable, isn't it the case that I *can't* change existent licenses?
>
You can't usually change existing licenses, but you can of course change the
license for newer versions. This happens all the time (most often where the
people behind a project smell money, and simply don't publish their stuff
under an OS license for newer versions - this has happened e.g. with the GFS
project).

>But the viral bit of compliance only happens if you distribute?
>
Licensing is about software distribution. That is why at OSI, they are now
talking about use restrictions as well (some allegedly open source software
complies with the letter, but not the spirit, of the OSD by allowing free
source distribution but mandating that all copies of the software regularly
fetch banner ads from http://whatever). In the web world, where software is
increasingly become services residing on an Internet server rather than stuff
to be distributed on punchcard/magtape/floppy/CD, that is becoming an
increasingly important distinction.

>Yet wikiworks for VisualWorks is so distributed. Since cincom doesn't
>license it for distribution, I think *they* must be ok. I'm unclear on how
>non-bundled stuff works. 
>
They redistribute just the parcel, not linked with non-GPL code. Squeak
doesn't have such a mechanism (yet), you redistribute everything as an image.
The VW method clearly is not linking, the Squeak method arguably is.

>Or for anything intended for inclusion in the core distro. I'm unclear
>if/how modules will affect this.
>
See above. With modules, the distinction between 'core' (thus 'viral'
modifications in the distribution image) and 'non-core' (everything that you
can fetch as a module) will become clearer, and the number of licenses
applicable to 'non-core' modules will greatly increase.

>Hmm. Also, for anything you want to distribute *as* an image, I'd
>guess. I'm not sure how SuperSwiki projects fit in.
>
The distribution is putting them on the SuperSwiki. So you could put GPL'ed
projects on there, because downloading and installing them would constitute
use, not distribution. Again, you probably couldn't redistribute an image
containing these.


-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg at cdegroot.com>
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