[openbeos] Re: some notes about the license

  • From: "Matthijs Hollemans" <matthijs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2003 18:53:16 +0200

> > To me, we should change the license and
> > add some clauses to deny the right to
> > duplicate the whole work making little
> > changes and renaming the product.
>
> To us, the developers, it must remain as it is.
> Sorry if I sound too harsh but the fact is that,
> as Ingo pointed out, the license is MIT and
> won't change. So move along and drop this.

There seems to be some confusion here and there about this whole
licensing thing. To clarify a little: OpenBeOS is not one product,
but a compilation of several independent works.

Each kit, server, add-on, driver, or whatever is a separate thing,
and is separately licensed. Most are licensed under the terms of the
MIT license. But our CVS tree also contains code that is otherwise
licensed: BSD, (L)GPL, and the Be Sample Code License to name but a
few.

So it makes no sense to say "OpenBeOS uses the MIT license", because
there is more than one license. Having said that, the MIT license is
the dominant one. Code that uses a different license will only be
added to the CVS as a matter of exception, and if there is a very
good reason to do so.

By the way, if you want to change the license, you can always fork
the project and add your restrictions. (Heh heh.)

Matthijs


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