Meld's Bazaar support

[John Arbash Meinel]

Matthew D. Fuller wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 02:01:31PM -0400 I heard the voice of
> Aaron Bentley, and lo! it spake thus:
>> It's not about the particular restrictions of the GPL or BSD.  It's
>> because Stephen wants to distribute meld.vc.bzr as part of a
>> BSD-licensed library, and if it's GPLed, then he can't.
> 
> Yes, but the point is I'm not sure that's true.  The GPL won't get
> along with 3- or 4-clause BSD licenses, but meld.vc has a 2-clause on
> it.  I've never heard an argument that makes much sense for GPL and
> 2-c BSD being incompatible.

My understanding is that GPL code can use BSD 2-c code. Because it
secretly up-casts it to GPL code. There is nothing that prevents you
from taking BSD 2-c code, and re-releasing it as GPL code.

However, BSD 2-c code cannot use GPL code, without being upgraded to
GPL. This is a GPL restriction, not a BSD one.

So the specific issue is that meld/vc is licensed as BSD 2-c code. Which
means that when it is bundled with meld, it is actually being released
as all GPL code, since meld is GPL, and everything that a GPL program
uses must be GPL.

However, the specific copyright is BSD, so that someone can re-release
just 'vc/' as its own BSD 2-c package.

This is, naturally, just my interpretation of licensing.

Here are some references I use to support it:

This is probably the most authoritative:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean

"It means that the other license and the GNU GPL are compatible; you can
combine code released under the other license with code released under
the GNU GPL in one larger program.

The GPL permits such a combination provided it is released under the GNU
GPL. The other license is compatible with the GPL if it permits this too."

So the reason the licenses are compatible, is because you can bundle
them together and release the whole thing as GPL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_and_GPL_licensing

"Code licensed under the BSD license can be relicensed under the GPL (is
"GPL-compatible") without securing the consent of all original authors.
Code under the GPL cannot be relicensed under the BSD license without
securing the consent of all original authors"


====================
So it seems the Meld sources are incomplete. Technically, everything is
released as GPL, and some portions are *also* released as BSD.

We could write a 'bzr.py' file which was GPL, and not have any problems.
Until someone wanted to redistribute it as BSD. Because it would depend
on bzrlib, which is a GPL library, and cannot be used as BSD.

And if Stephen wants to be able to spin of meld/vc/* then all sources in
there must be BSD, and he may not accept something that is GPL only.

John
=:->


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