Re: [gNewSense-users] Trademarks In gNewSense and the status of the CDDL License

[Kevin Dean]

Yeah, it's a very interesting case...

Joerg pointed something else out to me that we REALLY need to look
into when gNewSense 2.0 comes around.

There are a BUNCH of applications that have GPLv2 or later and some
projects will upgrade to version 3. However, 2 and three are
incompatible, (like the CDDL and GPL) and some upgrades might actually
make the software undistributable in binary form. :P

I'm trying to find out what is the "best" solution to this. Obviously
the entire package is Free Software now and obviously we're quite able
to distribute the source. The problem is that the BINARIES can't be
distributed because we can't meet the terms of both the GPL and the
CDDL at the same time.

On Nov 14, 2007 11:18 AM, Markus Laire <address@hidden> wrote:
> Kevin Dean wrote:
> > On Nov 14, 2007 4:00 AM, Markus Laire <address@hidden> wrote:
> >> What about the question whether Joerg Shilling had the right to change
> >> the license from GPL to CDDL or not?
> >
> > I wasn't aware that there were contributors that were objecting to the
> > license change.
>
> I wasn't aware of any objections. Just some questioning of whether Joerg
> Shilling had the authorization from all copyright-holders to change the
> license (of mkisofs IIRC).
>
> I asked that because I understood your message to mean that whole
> cdrtools (including mkisofs) had been changed to CDDL. But if the
> license of mkisofs hasn't been changed, then this question doesn't seem
> to be relevant. (But then a GPL <=> CDDL problem is still there, as you
> say below.)
>
> >> I seem to remember that when this was discussed in Debian's
> >> mailing-lists, there was a comment that Joerg Shilling didn't have the
> >> right to change the license from GPL to CDDL for some parts of the code,
> >> for which he isn't the only Copyright-holder.
> >
> > Okay, I did a search for this and I see the problem. mkisofs is still
> > GPL software but it calls in libscg which is now CDDL. Joerg certainly
> > has the right to change his libscg to CDDL - it just kills the
> > possibility of a binary package for mkisofs...
> >
> > Hrm...
>
> --
> Markus Laire
>