On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 13:05:51 -0700, Tim Smith wrote:
> The anti-OOXML crowd has come up with some interesting new FUD: a
> license is not compatible with GPL unless it is sub-licensable. This
> assertion has been made now on Groklaw, and Roy has picked it up.
>
> <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080417104016186>
>
> Groklaw says there that a license that prevents or restricts
> sub-licensing rights can't be used by FOSS.
>
> There's an interesting problem with that. The BSD license is not
> sub-licensable. Thus, according to Groklaw's analysis, you can't
> legally use BSD code with GPL code! Since Linux contains a fair amount
> of BSD-licensed code, if Groklaw is right, Linux is not legal.
>
> (If you want a BSD-like license that is sub-licensable, the license you
> should use is the MIT X11 license. As Rosen points out in his book on
> open source licensing, that is the main difference between the BSD
> license and the MIT license).
>
> It gets even more interesting. Go take a look at GPLv3:
>
> <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
>
> Read the last sentence of section 2. GPLv3 *explicitly* prohibits
> sub-licensing. This means that, if Groklaw is right, GPLv3 is not an
> acceptable license for FOSS!
>
> Besides completely botching sub-licensing, note the Groklaw article also
> claims that a royalty is required on things licensed under OSP. That's
> completely false. Also note, most of the cites given in that article
> are to criticism of *other* Microsoft licenses, criticizing them for
> things that are not in OSP. Finally, the main structure of Groklaw's
> argument is that RAND licenses *can* be bad, and OSP is a RAND,
> therefore OSP *must* be bad--is there anyone here who can't spot the
> fallacy of that mode of argument?
>
> The really funny thing about this is that there *IS* a potential problem
> with OSP and free software relating to sub-licensing, but Groklaw
> completely missed it.
I'd love to see what Alexander has to say on this subject....
As usual, Groklaw doesn't have a clue.
Of course since Roy Schestowitz is involved with Groklaw, that comes as no
surprise.
--
Moshe Goldfarb
Collector of soaps from around the globe.
Please visit The Hall of Linux Idiots:
http://linuxidiots.blogspot.com/
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