svn 14760 (new diff applet)

[Rich Felker]

On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 12:21:56PM -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
> On Sunday 09 April 2006 11:50 pm, Rich Felker wrote:
> 
> > > So you're saying the GPL can apply to just _parts_ of the file?  Because
> > > if the GPL applies to the whole file, then we can't be _required_ to
> > > apply additional license terms to the file.
> > >
> > > I understand the concept of dual licensing, but that's two separate
> > > license grants from the original copyright holder, which includes the
> > > ability to ignore the ones you don't plan to use.  Busybox isn't dual
> > > licensed, it's GPL.
> > >
> > > If only _parts_ of the file are dual licensed, then the file (as a whole)
> > > is not dual licensed, and the license notice is at the very least
> > > misleading. (I don't believe the GPL can apply to just part of a file
> > > anyway, but that's a separate issue.)
> >
> > The GPL applies to the whole of whatever you apply it to, of course.
> 
> So therefore we could choose to distribute it under the GPL, and drop the BSD 
> notice?
> 
> This is what I'm trying to clarify.  It's downright _silly_ to use the short 
> boilerplate for GPL, and yet have the full BSD notice there.  And if the GPL 
> notice plus full GPL text doesn't cover the requirements of the BSD notice 
> (warantee disclaimer and copyright notice from author), then _THE LICENSE IS 
> NOT COMPATIBLE_.

This is nonsense. GPL also allows a warranty disclaimer and of course
having the author's copyright is allowed (and desired). Don't start
thinking you're so special that you discovered a new incompatibility
between the GPL and BSD that none of the countless people who have
read and studied them in detail were able to find over the past 15+
years...

> I would like to strip the code down to just the one line boilerplate.  I would 
> like to remove extraneous and misleading license notices that do _not_ in 
> fact apply to this file, if in fact the whole of this file is under the GPL 
> and only parts of the file are derived from BSD sources.  We aren't 
> annotating which parts are under which license, if you want to use this code 
> under the BSD license, you should go to the BSD licensed source to get a 
> clean copy.  We can provide a pointer.

This sounds totally reasonable. I never said you should keep the full
BSD text. A simple statement referring users to another included file
which explains the copyright situation on these files should be fine.

Rich