[Gcl-devel] Re: [Maxima] Re: GCL compliance and Bill Schelter

Camm Maguire <camm@enhanced.com> writes:

> I'm certainly no lawyer, and could be completely mistaken.  But I
> believe that distributing such code under the GPL does not violate any
> of these conditions.  All notices and disclaimers can remain in place,
> the copyright remains intact with the author, who in any case is free
> to separately distribute the code the way they see fit.  But if one
> receives the code from someone distributing it under the GPL, then
> said person has the *added* restriction that any binaries they
> distribute must be accompanied by the source.  Just my understanding,
> of course.  The distribution of binary maxima compiled with CMUCL is a
> good example.
> 
> Take care,

This does not contradict what I am saying.  But the source files which were
distributed under BSD copyright must keep this copyright also, if someone
should develop improvements under GPL and distributes the *combined* work
under GPL.  I still can extract the files under BSD (including improvements
on these files!) and use them under BSD.  And I think this is a
sufficiently strong protection of a BSD library in most cases, because
commercial spin-offs have to face the free competition from the very
beginning.

Nicolas.