Re: The Policy(tm)

[Russ Allbery]

Peter Simons <address@hidden> writes:
> Russ Allbery writes:

>> You're unwilling to accept macros that are under the advertising-free
>> BSD license or that are declared to be in the public domain by the
>> author?

> Oh my ... If there ever was a political issue, this would be it. :-|
> Personally, I couldn't care less whether the macros are licensed under
> the GPL, the BSD license, or the communist manifesto. But I have the
> distinct feeling that Richard Stallman will freak out when he realizes
> that there is non-GPL content (gasp!) on www.gnu.org.

No, that's fine; the requirement is just that it all be GPL-compatible.
Public domain, advertising-clause-free BSD, and MIT/X license code is all
GPL-compatible, meaning that it can be relicensed under the GPL (or the
GPL with the Autoconf exception, for that matter) if anyone needs to do
so.  All three are fully more permissive than the GPL is.

I ask because all Autoconf macros I write I place in the public domain
(since I see no reason and nothing that can be gained by restricting
probes designed solely to improve the portability of software; I think
that the free software community has benefitted from the portability of
software more than perhaps any other group).  I want to make sure that I
can still contribute them.  (And would prefer that they remain marked as
being in the public domain, although I don't mind too much if they're
relicensed to GPL + exception for the purposes of the archive.)

There are no legal difficulties that come from accepting code with those
licenses; I just wasn't sure if you were intending to reject them as a
matter of policy.

-- 
Russ Allbery (address@hidden)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>