[freeroleplay] Re: Licenses
- From: Bryce Harrington <bryce@xxxxxxxx>
- To: FRPGC <freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 09:05:01 -0700 (PDT)
On 28 Jul 2003, Ricardo Gladwell wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-07-27 at 18:00, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > Also, something you may want to consider is instead of converting the
> > FRINGE license, to merely *add* the GPL. This way, if you have users
> > who like the old licensing terms, they can continue happily using it
> > that way, while you can still gain the benefit of the GPL. This is
> > called 'dual licensing'.
>
> That might well be an idea. The only problem is trying to keep things
> simple: adding more than one license makes things complicated.
Somewhat, yes, but there's actually quite a bit of software licensed
this way. For example, Perl and many Perl modules/scripts/applications
are licensed under both the GPL and Artistic licenses. For all intents
and purposes, if you're only interested in the GPL nature you can treat
it as any other GPL program and basically forget about the Artistic
license alternative. So it turns out not to be that complicated in
practice.
> Also, I;m still not sure what you mean when you say the FDL isn't
> compatible. Can you re-license stuff under, say, the GPL or OPL if
> it's been published under the GPL?
Sorry, I should clarify. Most open source licenses are incompatible
with each other by design; they have to be that way to work. The GPL is
incompatible with other licenses, too.
Philosophically, incompatibility is fine. But for me it's simply the
practical matter - if I have a book under FDL and some software under
the GPL, I can't use parts of one in the other. If I have some images
that I use in my GPL'd software, I can't transparently also use it in my
FDL-covered manual.
Anyway, so I feel the whole purpose of the FDL is basically undermined
by the fact that you can't combine GPL'd materials with it. Because of
this mis-feature, my opinion is, why bother with it? Just GPL the
book. ;-)
Bryce
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