[gentoo-dev] Re: RFC - Gentoo on the Lab

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Donnie Berkholz posted <430947E3.1000201@gentoo.org>, excerpted below,  on
Sun, 21 Aug 2005 20:34:59 -0700:

> Ricardo Loureiro wrote:
> 
> | The final result of the project will be released to the community
> | (GPL or BSD, still need to think), so I'd love to ear from users
> | dealing with this kind of scenario, question, comments, whatever you
> | think I should focus on. Oh, a name for the project would be welcome
> | =)
> 
> I strongly encourage you to release it under the same license as Portage
> is (GPL-2), so parts (or all) of it could be incorporated into Gentoo.

If I'm not mistaken (and I admit I could be, IANAL), BSD licensed
material, because the BSD license is a more permissive license with
generally few conditions, can be co-mingled in a GPL (2) project without
issue, and with the whole thing continuing to be GPL (2) licensed.  I'm
not sure whether BSD markers must remain attached or not.  In fact, I
believe it's fairly common for the kernel, for instance, to borrow BSD
code, and that said borrowed code doesn't have to be treated specially at
all (save for the traditional ACK of original source, but that's only
responsible origin tracing, certainly within the context of the SCOs of
the world).

Of course, the other possibility, if the permissiveness of BSD is desired,
would be a dual-license BSD/GPL.  That clears up any possible conflicts
directly and immediately.  OTOH, with portage itself already GPL2
licensed, I'm not sure I see much point in BSD licensing any portage
dependent new code, in any case, since it's dependent on GPL2 code anyway.
Still, the dual license certainly can't harm, and would likely be my
choice if I wanted the BSD permissiveness to apply to my code, under the
circumstances.  (FWIW, I prefer GPL, so there's no question that's how I'd
license it if it were me, but it's not, so that doesn't count.)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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