On Tue, 13 May 1997, Bill Studenmund wrote:

> This restriction is why Linux and *BSD can't share code too well. There's
> a lot of stuff in our kernel which isn't GPL'd but can be distributed as
> long as you adhere to its conditions. Well, since its conditions aren't
> GPL (nor have the restrictions of GPL), to GPL it would violate these code
> chunks' copyright.

Please do not confuse copyright and licencing conditions. Copyright
has little to do with this discussion.

Last time I looked at this the GPL did not have any clauses that
were incompatable with the standard Berkeley licence, nor did the
Berkeley licence have any clauses that were incompatable with the
GPL. So it is perfectly possible to distribute something under an
amalgam of both. I don't know what you believe the incompatability
is here.

I believe the reason that NetBSD has no GPL code in the kernel is
that it couldn't be distributed without putting the entire kernel
under GPL, which many of us find overly restrictive.

cjs

Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca		Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc.		`And malt does more than Milton can
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