[Gcl-devel] Re: [Maxima] Re: GCL compliance and Bill Schelter

[Nicolas Neuss]

Camm Maguire <address@hidden> writes:

> Greetings, gentle people!
> 
> I must confess that I don't even have time now to adequately ponder
> the flurry of latest emails.  I'd like to make the following points,
> which I hope will calm and clarify.
> 
> 1) I will do everything in my power to ensure that GCL's license will
>    never force a license onto projects that use it as a compiler.
>    This is not only achievable, but from my understanding, not even
>    controversial among the existing participants of this
>    discussion. Please, everyone, rest assured.
> 
> 2) There are several different ways to achieve 1), some more difficult
>    than others, including possibly doing nothing at all if it can be
>    shown that Dr. Schelter received permission to use unexec more than
>    10 years ago.  Frankly I think this is the most likely actuality,
>    especially given his work with emacs over the years.  But the
>    actual path to 1) is not yet clear in my mind, and probably won't
>    be for some time.  In the mean time, we have the status quo, which,
>    with all its ambiguities, is just as functional as its always been.
> 
> 3) This having been said, it is my opinion that axiom would be better
>    served by a GPL license.  It is of course completely up to the
>    axiom developers and any other relevant parties, certainly not me,
>    but I feel that the existing BSD license places all the volunteer
>    work being poured into axiom at risk of being hijacked by a
>    commercial fork of the code.  The last thing I am is a lawyer, but
>    my understanding of the BSD license is that anyone, including the
>    developers, can, if they so chose, relicense their copy/modified
>    version of the code under the GPL.  This does not violate the BSD
>    license, to my understanding, and should require no special
>    permission.  After all, one can make a commercial fork of BSD code
>    without permission, so one should certainly be able also to make a
>    GPL fork of said code.  

I don't think this is right.  You are allowed to distribute binaries and to
sell them, but if you distribute sources you have to keep the copyright
intact.  An extract:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

   1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

   2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
      documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the other hand, the LGPL allows the user to change it to the GPL.

Nicolas.