On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 12:27:35AM +0530, Kushal Das wrote: ,---- | Hi, | I am making an application which is actually a combination of | different packages. Now the problem is these packages are of | diffrent licenses like : GPL, LGPL, MIT, MPL. | | Now I am confused in which license my application should be released | ? And whether it is at all required to have a license for my | application or not? | | Regards, | Kushal `---- GNU LGPL and MIT (assuming X11 License) are both compatible with the GNU GPL license. But MPL is not. This means you cannot legally combine or link the code. However, MPL 1.1 has a provision (section 13) that allows a program (or parts of it) to offer a choice of another license as well. If part of a program allows the GNU GPL as an alternate choice, or any other GPL-compatible license as an alternate choice, that part of the program has a GPL-compatible license. But only the author of MPL'ed code can make this decision. My recommendation is to adopt GNU GPL and find an alternative for the MPL'ed code or write one yourself. You can also ask the MPL'ed code author to dual-license with GNU GPL. -- Anand Babu GPG Key ID: 0x62E15A31 Blog [http://ab.freeshell.org] The GNU Operating System [http://www.gnu.org]

Kushal Das wrote: If your application is a compilation of various packages, you may release your application under a license of your choice, and distribute third party packages under their respective licenses along with your modifications to them in the manner the respective licenses permit redistribution.

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: Installing a binary released under a free license is almost never a sin. You may license your interface/application as *you* please. The "compatability" question is the extent to which you can relicense an existing work. For example, the BSD license gives most freedom here: you could take code released under the BSD license and release it under the GPL (BSD is therefore GPL compatible) or even release it under a non-free license. GPLed code can be released only under the GPL and therefore, it would be seen as BSD incompatible. The safest approach is to release the work under same license to avoid issues (and quite incidentally, respect the author's licensing philosophy :) The free software licenses are proliferating at such a pace that it is slowly becoming a nuisance (or opportunity, depending on what one does for a living). Today, the world is divided between those who publish source code, ie. free software developers releasing their work under a free license, and those who do not publish source code - non free software, where the source code is protected as a trade secret. While the non-free entities have reasons to fight among themselves, the free software community could have no room for self-defeating issues. All source code published on the internet should be deemed to be public domain software - atleast the decisions by the US courts are largely in that direction. The shift should be towards placing all free software in the public domain so that free software license proliferation stops and more attention goes into writing useful code without duplicating efforts.

On Sat, Aug 05, 2006 at 12:08:33PM +0530, Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay wrote: ,---- | Anand Babu wrote: | > My recommendation is to adopt GNU GPL and find an alternative for | > the MPL'ed code or write one yourself. You can also ask the MPL'ed | > code author to dual-license with GNU GPL. | | What happen's when the application in question only *installs* | binary only packages that are licensed under licenses which are GPL | incompatible ? | | eg. I create an application/interface that installs two RPMs for two | packages A and B. A is GPL compatible if not GPL itself and B is GPL | incompatible. How do I license my interface/application or does the | license for my application (which in a non strict sense is only an | installer) as GPL compatible meet all requirements ? `---- You have to be precise. Saying "Installing" is not sufficient. GPL incompatible free software license allows you to redistribute but doesn't allow you to link your GPL'ed code to it even in binary form. Because the binary code still runs inside your application context. So you can re-distribute but not link. -- Anand Babu GPG Key ID: 0x62E15A31 Blog [http://ab.freeshell.org] The GNU Operating System [http://www.gnu.org]