Andrei's Google Talk

[Juanjo Alvarez]

On Sun, 26 Sep 2010 17:00:23 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:


> The problem is, the BSD license *is* viral. If I look at BSD licensed
> code, and someone accuses me of incorporating bits of it into Phobos,
> then those bits must
>   be removed or Phobos becomes BSD licensed and so every user gets
>   infected with
> it, too.
> 
> If you say "that'll never happen", consider that twice that exact issue
> has come up.
> 
> Linking with a DLL is not viral, but statically linking a BSD licensed
> library *is* viral.

True. My "AFAIK" was wrong; I stand corrected:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070114093427179

Summary:

(a) the BSD appears to require that modifications be distributed only 
under the terms of the BSD, and that this requirement therefore cascades 
down to subsequent generations of code;

(b) the license does not appear to permit the relicensing of BSD code 
under the terms of any other license, at least in so far as any 
restrictions in other licenses would seem not to be binding;

(c) there may be some scope for arguing that the term “modification” to 
the code is restricted or limited in some fashion. However, as the 
license only permits redistribution of “modifications” the BSD does not 
permit the redistribution of any derivative work which is not a 
modification;

(d) the BSD does not have a requirement for the distribution of source 
code. It is not clear whether this means there is a deficiency in the 
Open Source Definition.