Clarify license compatibility provisions

The MPL 2.0-influenced GPL compatibility provision of section 3
arguably is problematic because it can be read as clashing with the
GPL's copyleft requirement to license the "entire" modified work under
the GPL. I believe the conflict is illusory because one cannot grant a
copyright license covering what one does not hold copyright
on. Nevertheless, having looked at this provision with fresh eyes, I
can foresee it being criticized. The change makes the provision more
like a typical relicensing clause in licenses that aim at outbound GPL
compatibility.

The latter part of section 4 is meant to cover the inbound license
compatibility problem, but the existing version is not clearly
inapplicable to the situation where one is combining copyleft-next
code with GPL code. I believe the change made here is useful as it
does not cover the case where you would have noncompliance with the
other license (as for example in a GPL|copyleft-next combination
scenario, if you ignore the existence of the latter part of section
3).
This commit is contained in:
Richard Fontana 2016-04-27 09:30:47 -04:00
parent 2ed89c7322
commit 28d543e100

View file

@ -32,11 +32,11 @@ THIS IS A DRAFT. DO NOT USE AS A LICENSE.
If You Distribute a Derived Work, You must license the entire Derived
Work as a whole under this License, with prominent notice of such
licensing. This condition may not be avoided through such means as
separate Distribution of portions of the Derived Work. You may
additionally license the Derived Work under the GPL, so that the
recipient may further Distribute the Derived Work under either this
License or the GPL.
separate Distribution of portions of the Derived Work.
If the Derived Work includes material licensed under the GPL, You may
instead license the Derived Work under the GPL.
4. Condition Against Further Restrictions; Inbound License Compatibility
When Distributing a Covered Work, You may not impose further
@ -48,8 +48,9 @@ THIS IS A DRAFT. DO NOT USE AS A LICENSE.
However, You may Distribute a Covered Work incorporating material
governed by a license that is both OSI-Approved and FSF-Free as of the
release date of this License, provided that Your Distribution complies
with such other license.
release date of this License, provided that compliance with such
other license would not conflict with any conditions stated in other
sections of this License.
5. Conditions for Distributing Object Code