should all BB code be GPL?

Rich Felker dalias at aerifal.cx
Wed Jul 12 16:26:24 UTC 2006


On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 08:11:07AM -0700, ldoolitt at recycle.lbl.gov wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 03:26:01AM -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > On Tue, 11 Jul 2006, Rob Landley wrote:
> > 
> > > On Monday 10 July 2006 7:20 am, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > > >   i was just about to write a perl script to go through the source
> > > > files and replace any GPL-related verbosity with the single-line
> > > > boilerplate for brevity until i read this in
> > > > libbb/change_identity.c (sorry about the ugly re-formatting, you
> > > > can blame pine):
> > >
> > > All busybox code _is_ GPL.  If it isn't, we can't ship it in a GPL
> > > project.
> > 
> > ok, then, so i can fire up a script and replace all other licensing
> > crap in BB source files with that one-line boilerplate, then?
> 
> While that may be legal, it is immoral to not communicate the
> original intent of the author.  Such an action smells of historical
> revisionism.
> 
> How about adding the following boilerplate to the source files
> that are not purely GPL:
>   /* The above license has been reviewed, and is compatible with the GPL.
>    * The GPL is the only license which applies to a Busybox binary.
>    */

This does not convey the same information. If the file was received
through busybox (likely with at least minor modifications), that
modified version is NOT licensed under the original license by the
person who modified it; it's licensed only under the GPL. Unlike GPL,
the original license is not a copyleft license and does not require
people modifying the code to relicense modifications under the same
license.

Rich




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