Re: [Ocaml-lib-devel] Re: Unzip module

[Brian H. <bh...@sp...>]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Blair Zajac wrote:

> Brian Hurt wrote:
> 
>  > Thought of a third possibility:
>  > 	- Ask the author's permission to relicense his work
> 
> How about a dual license as Mozilla does it?  That way any work done or
> improvements to it don't cause a fork (would it cause a fork?)  Would
> there be a problem if we come up with a patch to the LGPL version, could
> that be placed back into the BSD version?

It's much harder to go from GPL to BSD than it is the other direction.  
And I thought Mozilla only had one license- it was Python that had two.

Also, dual licenses worry me.  I am not a lawyer, and (probably) neither 
is anyone else on this list.  We don't expect lawyers to be good programs 
based solely on their skills as a lawyer- but every yahoo who can AC post 
to Slashdot thinks he can write a contract or license that'd stand up in a 
court of law.

The advantage of the GPL, LGPL, and BSD Licenses is that they have at 
least been run by lawyers, and the BSD license by a judge.  I don't know 
how a judge or a lawyer would react to a dual license situation.  And I 
don't think anyone else does either- but it's quite probably that the 
ruling would be that any action permitted by *either* license is 
acceptable.  

Which, in the case of GPL + BSD, is basically anything. About the only
thing not kosher with the BSD license is changing the copyright.  I can
change the copyright under GPL, it just has to stay under the GPL.  It is
perfectly legal for me to grab a copy of Linux, and replace Linus
Torvald's name with my own and release "brianux", the brilliant new OS I
just wrote.  So long as I released it under the GPL, it's perfectly legal
(the law doesn't care about the ridicule I'd be subject to on slashdot).
So it's quite possible that the dual GPL+BSD license is no license at all.

It certainly has created a large amount of uncertainity which makes 
enforcement harder.

-- 
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive,
difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of
mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it."
                                - Gene Spafford 
Brian