Licensing

William Bland

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Apr 13, 2003, 8:57:23 AM4/13/03

to

Hello,
I want to try to release Schemix soon
(http://www.abstractnonsense.com/schemix) but I need to
be sure I've done the right thing wrt the license. Schemix
is based on TinyScheme (http://tinyscheme.sf.net) which is
released under a "BSD-style" license. The full text of the
license is at http://tinyscheme.sourceforge.net/license.txt

My preferred license for Schemix is the GPL. From what I know
of the BSD license, you are free to do anything with BSD code,
including re-licensing parts of it under the GPL. Is this
correct? Is there anything non-standard in TinyScheme's license
that would stop me from releasing Schemix with a GPL license?

Thanks very much for any advice.

Best wishes,
Bill.

Jim White

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Apr 13, 2003, 2:03:13 PM4/13/03

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William Bland wrote:
>...

> My preferred license for Schemix is the GPL. From what I know
> of the BSD license, you are free to do anything with BSD code,
> including re-licensing parts of it under the GPL. Is this
> correct? Is there anything non-standard in TinyScheme's license
> that would stop me from releasing Schemix with a GPL license?

GNU's interpretation is here:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

Basically they say that BSD is not GPL compatible because it has the
"advertising" requirement (the bit about having to include the copyright
notice).

But this seems to me (not a lawyer) to be quite an extreme position. If
for example you included the required notice in your derived work, you
would be in compliance with the BSD license. Only someone creating a
derivation your work who removed the notice would violate the original
BSD license.

Jim

Anton van Straaten

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Apr 13, 2003, 7:14:20 PM4/13/03

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Jim White wrote:
> GNU's interpretation is here:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
>
> Basically they say that BSD is not GPL compatible because it has the
> "advertising" requirement (the bit about having to include the copyright
> notice).

The "bit about having to include the copyright notice" is not the
advertising clause. Copyright acknowledgement is required by the GPL also.
The advertising clause is described on this FSF page:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html . The advertising clause begins with
the sentence "All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this
software must display the following acknowledgement..."

The FSF says on both of the above pages that the modified BSD license,
without the advertising clause, is GPL compatible. The Tiny Scheme license
is a modified BSD license - it has no advertising clause, and it closely
matches the text in the XFree86 license, which is what the FSF suggests
basing such licenses on.

So, the FSF would consider the TinyScheme license GPL-compatible.

Anton

foomaster1200

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Apr 14, 2003, 12:05:14 AM4/14/03

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Jim White <j...@pagesmiths.com> writes:

> William Bland wrote:
>> ... My preferred license for Schemix is the GPL. From what I know
>> of the BSD license, you are free to do anything with BSD code,
>> including re-licensing parts of it under the GPL. Is this
>> correct? Is there anything non-standard in TinyScheme's license
>> that would stop me from releasing Schemix with a GPL license?
>
> GNU's interpretation is here:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
>
> Basically they say that BSD is not GPL compatible because it has the
> "advertising" requirement (the bit about having to include the
> copyright notice).
>

I looks like http://tinyscheme.sourceforge.net/license.txt does not
have the advertising clause.

--
Someone is DROOLING on my collar!!

William Bland

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Apr 15, 2003, 11:51:24 AM4/15/03

to

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003 23:14:20 +0000, Anton van Straaten wrote:

>
> So, the FSF would consider the TinyScheme license GPL-compatible.
>

Great! Thanks for the advice.

Best wishes,
Bill.