Trent Piepho wrote: > > Everything I have read about this indicates that you need the > permission of ALL the copyright holders in order to > distribute their work under a different license. That's my interpretation as well. > Of course that will never happen with netrek. I doubt anyone > even knows who all the copyright holders are! This is why > orginizations like the FSF require that all contrbutors sign > over their copyright to the FSF. Well the copyright signoff is really just a peculiarity of the GPL. There's this idea that you can make money with GPL'ed software by selling a enhanced closed version, but in order to do so you have to make sure any contributions sent to you from the free version and incorporated into the code tree have the copyright turned over to you. This is because of the viral nature of the GPL requiring work done under that license to be given away for free in source form. With the BSD license this isn't really an issue, since the license offers true freedom. You submit your code, it get's incorporated into the package. The company maintaining the package might use it in a commercial version, or not. If someone later goes off and uses the package in some other way, all they need do is make the bibliographic note that they have used the package as the basis of their work. They may or may not release their modifications as they so desire. It's just no big deal. When I originally read the netrek license I was under the impression that it meant non-commercial use. Upon further reflection it does seem to be more of a openness clause. "I'm giving you this, go forth and use it, I expect nothing in return." Hard to say. But it does seem that the Netrek license fits more closely with the BSD license except for that particular phrasing. Personally I think the GPL is one of the true evils of this world, only being surpassed by Milli Vanilli fan clubs, so I'm opposed to that license.