* Chris Maresca ckm@crust.net [010828 19:26]:
On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Mads Martin [iso-8859-1] Jørgensen wrote:
People who write code, can license their code however they want to. Then it's up to the project leader to determine if he want it in the project or not. Personally I will GPL all code I am to contribute.
That's not actually true. Code licensed under GPL does not allow for any other kind of license. That's because the GPL expressly forbids non-public source, something which other licenses allow. You cannot mix GPL code with anyother license type. Period. End of story.
Not exactly true. If you contribute to the exact code base directly, your code has to have the same license to be included, yes. But Open Firmware uses a modular design, and it would be very well possible to create a net boot module or a (graphical) user interface that uses the openfirmware lowlevel api under BSD license, which could still be used with OpenBIOS. It's similar with the Linux kernel and application programs that run upon the kernel, only communicating via a defined API. These programs do not link against the kernel, so they might have a different license.
Read the license, you'll see what I mean. If you decide that your code should only be licensed under GPL, and you contribute it to a BSD project, you might as well contribute nothing.
A license is only valid to the point to which the license owner is willing to inforce what it says anyways. So, except any religiousity, why should anyone want to inforce that part if it only keeps back enhancement of the software project
Best regards, Stefan