[Olsr-dev] -lc fork

[Albert Dengg]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 11:52:05PM +0100, Aaron Kaplan wrote:
> Hi Erik!
> 
> One thing that has been noticed by a few folks - you seem to have  
> forked off olsr with the http://sourceforge.net/projects/olsr-lc/  
> project and suddently changed to license to GPL.
> 
> I wonder if that is possible. After all you take a lot of current  
> olsr code and simply re-declare the BSD license as GPL.
> 
> Is it that simple to make something GPL? Can anybody here with good  
> knowledge of licensing issues clarify?
!!!i'm not a lawyer!!!, but all resources i have read so far suggest so...
see for example
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#OrigBSD
Because it imposes a specific requirement that is not in the GPL;
namely, the requirement on advertisements of the program. Section 6
of GPLv2 states:

            You may not impose any further restrictions on the
	    recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.

GPLv3 says something similar in section 10. The
advertising clause provides just such a further
restriction, and thus is GPL-incompatible.

The revised BSD license does not have the
advertising clause, which eliminates the problem.

and also:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html#new-compatible-licenses

though, since this is a one way procedure i have heard a few runts of
bsd devolpers having their flowing in gpl projects without being able to
use improvments there back in the bsd licenced original problem.

the thing about the bsd license file is something else of course

just my 2c

yours
albert