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

[Jiri Hnidek]

Hi,
thanks for short guide to copyright law :-). It seems that GPL makes
many people angry. I don't want to make people angry :-). On the other
hand I like GPL from perspective of verse2 developer. Could we find some
conclusion? For instance, is it possible to use dual licensing? For
example: svn trunk of verse would be GPL/LGPL ever and every major
version would be released in two versions: GPL/LGP and BSD. Does any
software do it in this way?

Best Regards,

Jiri

David Given píše v Po 08. 08. 2011 v 20:41 +0100:
> 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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