Re: Why is Fedora not a Free GNU/Linux distributions?

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On Jul 22, 2008, Antonio Olivares <olivares14031@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I do not understand here, why some licenses are compatible and which
> ones are not.

License compatibiliy analysis requires looking into the permissions
and conditions established by each license, and looking for conflicts
between them.  For example, there's this funny Free Software license
that is incompatible with itself: it says you can run, study, modify
and distribute the software, with or without modifications, but you
must distribute your modifications as patches to the pristine version
of the file, rather than by distributing the modified version.

So, if you take a program A and a program B, and you want to combine
them, you can't do that, because both demand to remain as the
baseline.

A more common case of incompatibility is trying to combine two strong
copyleft licenses: each license permits you to distribute the
combination only under the license itself, so the only way you can
satisfy both is if they're both the same license.

Another common case is that of combining non-GPLed software with GPLed
software.  If the non-GPL license fails to grant some permission that
the GPL grants, the combination cannot be distributed, because the GPL
requires the combination to be distributed under the terms of the GPL,
and doesn't permit distribution if you can't offer or pass on the
permissions established in it for each and every part of the whole.


> For instance, the Mozilla Public License is incompatible with the
> GPL and we can see Mozilla firefox and/or Seamonkey, Thunderbird,
> .., etc live nicely in several distributions

Licenses apply to copyrightable works such as individual programs.
Even a single package might contain code under different licenses, as
long as the combination doesn't amount to a copyrightable work in
itself.  A distribution is a collection of programs.  Although such a
combination might be copyrightable in itself, and thus amount to a
derived work, the GPL makes an explicit exception to combinations that
are mere aggregations of packages in the same medium.  This is clear
permission for GPLed programs to be distributed along with programs
under licenses incompatible with the GPL, as long as the programs are
not derived works of the GPLed work.  Or something like that, IANAL
:-)

> Also a project that was licensed under the GPL, made changes to
> another license the CDDL, and I wondered why, GPL does not allow
> those kind of things?

If all the copyright holders of a program agree to offer the program
under a different license, copyright law says they can do that.  It
doesn't invalidate licenses granted before, or commitments to grant
such licenses, but they can stop offering the program under the old
license and start offering it under the new license.  Or they may
start offering the program under both.  Or offer it under some license
to some parties, and under another license to other parties.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}

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