[MonoDevelop] FSF

[Bernhard Spuida]

Hi all,

as stated in a previous mail, we (the Sharpdevelop team) decided to 
ask the FSF for their view of licensing matters regarding Monodevelop 
and Sharpdevelop. Here ist their answer which we accept as 
authoritative:

On 15 Jul 2004 at 18:23, novalis@fsf.org via RT wrote:

> On Thu, 2004-07-15 at 09:26, Bernhard Spuida via RT wrote:
> > The issues we now see are:
> > 
> > *	The assumption that without explicitly choosing a license, code 

> > derived from GPL'd code is 'license free' seems incorrect.
> 
> Code derived from GPL code must be licensed under the GPL.  
Additonal
> permissions may be added at the time of distribution or at any 
later
> time.  It's fine for them to license code that they add under some
> GPL-compatible but more permissive license.
> 
> > *	A change in licensing of GPL'd software is not possible without 
the 
> > permission of the copyright holders of all code involved from our 

> > understanding.
> 
> That's right with respect to the work as a whole.  
> 
> Basically, it seems like the MonoDevelop people can do what they 
propose
> to do.  That is, they can license their new code under the X11 
license
> (note: make sure they pick a version of said license which is 
actually
> GPL-compatible -- the most recent XFree86 license isn't).  This 
doesn't
> change a whole lot wrt the work as a whole (including plug-ins) 
until
> they replace all of the GPL code.  So long as there is some code in
> there which is GPL, they can't start making proprierary plug-ins. 
> 
> In other words, there are two ways to get the permission of all
> copyright holders:  1. Ask all copyright holders.  2. Reduce the 
number
> of copyright holders to those you already have permission from.
> 
> Note that the structure of the code as a whole is copyrighted, so 
their
> replacement should probably not proceed by going class-by-class and
> implementing each method of each class -- instead, they ought to 
sit
> down and start rewriting.
> 
> Their choice is a shame for software freedom, since what they want 
to do
> doesn't protect software freedom as much as the GPL.  But the good 
news
> is that you'll be able to freely merge in code from MonoDevelop 
into
> SharpDevelop.  This includes proprietary versions of SharpDevelop.  
You
> should mention this on the mailing list, because if they think that
> they'll stop you from making proprietary versions by converting to 
the
> X11 license, they are mistaken indeed.  
> 
> 
> -- 
> -Dave Turner
> GPL Compliance Engineer
> Support my work: http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=novalis&p=FSF

Regards,

             Bernhard Spuida
             #develop senior word wrangler



        
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