[Opensim-dev] GPL / BSD licensing dangers

[Robert Martin]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 7:18 AM, Neil Canham <neil at knowsense.co.uk> wrote:
> Would anyone be able to tell me about the warning for any one person not to
> work on both the OpenSim source and a viewer such as Hippo?  I understand
> that there are licensing differences (BSD vs GPL respectively) and that
> direct inclusion of GPL code in a BSD project breaks the GPL license.
>  Surely you could guard against such direct inclusion?  Does this extend to
> region modules and mini-region modules?  I'm in the position of wanting to
> make changes to the viewer and also to write MRMs or other modules.
>
It gets a bit "interesting" but in general because of the way that the
GPL is written all code in a GPL project must be GPL (or becomes GPL).
Now you  can have other licensed "stuff" with a GPL project (game
engine licensed GPL but game assets COMMERCIAL) but when a compile is
done anything that is part of or links into GPL code must be GPL.
LGPL does allow linking but it gets a bit twisty.

So the simple thing is working on OS and a viewer is possible but not
recommended could you maybe pick one set and then give the idea for
the other set to somebody else??


-- 
Robert L Martin