"Nouveau is a community project that is working on producing open-source 3D display drivers for NVIDIA graphics cards. Nouveau is not affiliated with Nvidia Corp and is an X.Org project. While this project is still far from being completed, for this holiday special we are sharing some of our first thoughts on this project from our experience thus far. We would like to make it very clear, however, that the Nouveau driver is no where near completed and still has a great deal of work ahead for the 3D component. This article today will also hopefully shed some light on the advancements of this project so far."
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Member since:2005-06-29
I was trying to point out that to mingle source between GPL and any other open source license is not allowed unless the other open source license allows its source to be wrapped by the GPL. To keep a project under a non-GPL license requires the project to not use GPL source. This makes the GPL incompatible in this scenario.
If you desire to create a GPL project out of non-GPL source, a BSD (2-clause) or MIT license would be considered compatible from the standpoint of the GPL.
Member since:2005-11-11
//If you desire to create a GPL project out of non-GPL source, a BSD (2-clause) or MIT license would be considered compatible from the standpoint of the GPL.//
Where did you get this idea from?
I don't believe it is correct.
AFAIK Linux itself (the kernel) contains BSD code.
Member since:
2005-07-09
That is not what would happen at *all*. If I am the copyright holder of BSD licensed code X, I don't have the legal *right* to incorporate GPL licensed code Y into code X and then distribute it. To do so would violate Y's copyright holder. If I *chose* to release a version of X under the terms of the GPL, I could bundle Y.
There as a subtle (but HUGE) difference between the situation I described and your claim: in your case, you make the GPL the active agent which goes around changing the license of other source code. That is just not true; the GPL never changed anybody's license.
In my case, I place the responsible party for a license change on the BSD license holder who *chooses* to integrate GPL code into his project. Big difference.
The GPL is *not* a virus. Developers who choose to ignore licensing issues are asking for trouble. But even if you accidentally include GPL code in your project, the GPL copyright holder can quite easily order a cease and desist to your distribution of the code. She cannot, however, make all of your code magically GPL licensed.