On May 6, 11:27 pm, hdante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > GPL can mix with other free software licenses, so people who write > BSD code and do not wish to remain BSD clean are free to use GPL'd > code. That's the important point.
No, it can't. It can only mix through aggregation, i.e. you can ship a GPL'd "plugin" with BSD code as long as you don't import the plugin directly. Here's a real life example from ipython: - Core IPython is BSD clean, and we intend to leave it that way - If we imported a gpl'd module in some core ipython component, the core component would be gpl (or something equally restrictive) as well, through viral nature of the license - Now, if you want a BSD-clean version of ipython (say, to embed it in a commercial program - with which I have absolutely *no* problem, and can only see good things coming from it), you would have to gleam out all the uses of that module from the source code. Not very fun, esp. if it's something important - There is a GPL'd module in "extensions" folder of IPython, ipy_bzr (that is because of bzrlib). It's never imported anywhere in ipython source code, but the user can import it in ipy_user_conf.py. This "contaminates" the config file and subsequently ipython (because it's imported into python interpreter ipython is running on), but luckily the user can opt out from importing it if he wishes to remain BSD clean. Or he can delete the file altogether if he wishes. Without GPL, none of this hair-splitting is necessary. I guess I could have gone the Carl Banks route and just say "It scares away some people". Consider my replies here an elaborate way of saying the very same thing. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
