[Verse-dev] http://www.uni-verse.org/ expired 07/13/2011

[David Given]

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On 08/08/11 12:42, Jiri Hnidek wrote:
[...]
> changing licence from BSD to GPL (verse server) and LGPL (verse library)
> is on my TODO list. I'm not expert in licenses and I don't know if it's
> so easy and if it is possible at all.

The short guide to copyright law is:

- - only the *copyright holder* can change the license of a piece of code.

- - but if the licenses are compatible, you can distribute a bundle of
code by several different authors, with several different licenses,
under a single aggregate license.

It *is* possible to take somebody else's BSD or MIT code and incorporate
it into a GPL project (although you're still bound by the terms in the
BSD or MIT licenses, i.e. correct attribution). It's not possible to do
it the other way round.

[...]
> BTW: IMHO BSD license is less strict for developers than GPL and LGPL.
> You can fork it and sell this fork without need to give forked source
> code back to the community. On the other side, it's not advantage for
> the community. ;-)

Only if you exclude people writing commercial software from 'community',
I'm afraid, because for them the GPL is the kiss of death.

Trying to incorporate GPL code (and, to a large extent, LGPL code) into
commercial software is just *too hard*. The licensing restrictions are
too onerous, and if you make a mistake the legal repercussions can be
huge. I write the stuff for a living and while we'll enthusiastically
use (and endorse) any BSD or MIT code we can lay our hands on, we
daren't touch GPL code with the regulation 10-foot pole.

So, if you release verse2 under a GPL license, it will instantly become
useless to a very, very large portion of your target audience --- i.e.,
anyone who wants to make money by writing games using it...

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