License Question

Colin Watson cjwatson at ubuntu.com
Thu Jun 28 14:28:24 BST 2007


On Tue, Jun 26, 2007 at 01:33:05AM -0500, Charlie wrote:
> I am currently creating a package and there is a question about
> licenses.  The MOTU who reviewed my package wrote:
> 
> "debian/copyright has references to both CC-BY-NC-ND and the GPL. I’m
> not sure that code licensed this way can be mixed in a single package."
> 
> I have been on IRC #ubuntu-motu and I cannot get a satisfactory answer.
> 
> Are these two licenses compatable?

They are not compatible licences. CC-BY-NC-ND forbids commercial use and
modification, which are both "further restrictions" under the terms of
the GPL.

> Can they be packaged together?

That's a slightly different question from whether they're compatible
licences, so I'm glad you asked it separately. As far as the GPL is
concerned, the question is whether the combination of the works under
the GPL and under the CC-BY-NC-ND form a "work as a whole" or are "mere
aggregation". The latter normally applies to something like separate
packages on a CD, while the former would normally apply to a single
package. The language in the GPL is as follows:

  These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole.  If
  identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
  and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
  themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
  sections when you distribute them as separate works.  But when you
  distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
  on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
  this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
  entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote
  it.

If portions of the code in this single package are under different
licences, then it is very likely to be a "work as a whole" and not
distributable as it stands.

If the CC-BY-NC-ND material is documentation, the question is not
straightforward. The FSF themselves use the GFDL for documentation for
GPL-covered programs, and it is at the very least not at all obvious
that the GPL and the GFDL are compatible in the ordinary sense. However,
the GFDL does at least allow modifications to the technical content of
documentation, as noted in http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html:

  Using the GFDL, we permit changes in the text of a manual that covers
  its technical topic. It is important to be able to change the
  technical parts, because people who change a program ought to change
  the documentation to correspond. The freedom to do this is an ethical
  imperative.

The CC-BY-NC-ND does not do this, so the situation is even shadier.

I would not be inclined to accept a package mixing the GPL and the
CC-BY-NC-ND even if the latter is only documentation, because any
changes we might need to make to the program could not be reflected in
the documentation, and this is likely to cause a quality problem at some
point. I would recommend going back to the upstream author and asking
for a licence change. Failing that, if possible, you should separate the
GPL and CC-BY-NC-ND components into separate source packages.

Regards,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]



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