Re: How to express dual licensing

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

John Scott <jscott@posteo.net> wrote:
> I just came upon a JavaScript file with this header:

> * Dual licensed under the MIT or GPL Version 2 licenses.
> * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
> * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/GPL-2.0

> My gut instinct is to just mark it as Expat  since it's more permissive

I was under impression, that LibreJS is fine with multiple  @license  
statements.

        // @license 
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d3d9a9a6595521f9666a5e94cc830dab83b65699&dn=expat.txt Expat
        // @license 
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:cf05388f2679ee054f2beb29a391d25f4e673ac3&dn=gpl-2.0.txt 
GPLv2-only

So whatʼs actually the issue?  Yes, it will really take only the first one into 
account, but thatʼs more that enough to fulfil its task: to say whether a piece 
of javascript is free.


> I wonder what the dual licensing  achieves in this case since it's 
> GPL-compatible.

The same as with any other dual-licensing: you are free from complying the 
conditions of the first licence if the the other one suits your better.

Terms of the Expat licence are in fact quite obnoxious for a webapp:

| The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in 
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

so the many find it venial to simply ignore them.

In this very case, though, itʼs indeed does not help anyone much, since GNU 
GPLv2 _only_ in hardly an attractive choice.


P. S. By the way:

> As opposed to using web tables, I've been adding comments like
> // @license magnet:?
> xt=urn:btih:d3d9a9a6595521f9666a5e94cc830dab83b65699&dn=expat.txt Expat

have you noticed, that your MUA is trying to hardwrap lines while being unable 
to do that properly?

Since there is actually no any sane reason to hardwrap lines, the fix should be 
easy, but alas I cannot suggest you how exactly to disable it, as your mail 
lacks ‘User-Agent’ header.

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