On Wed, 13 Nov 1996, Mark Brinicombe wrote:

> >Yes.  The GPL forbids any redistribution that is under a "less free" (in
> >the FSF sense) licence.  The BSD licence _is_ less free, and so you cannot
> >use GPL'd code.  Conversely, the Linux community can't realistically use
> >any large amounts of BSD code, because to be distributed with the kernel
> >it would have to adhere to both the BSD and the GP licences, and that's
> >difficult to achieve in practice.
> 
> I tend to consider BSD licence as 'more free' the BSD licence essentially says
> that you can do what you want with and the only condition is that you
> acknowledge the authors & copyright and keep the original disclaimer etc.

I do as well.  That's why I put "more free" in quotes and stressed that I
meant it in the FSF's sense.  The reason they consider the BSD licence
less free is that it doesn't _compel_ you to make your software free, and
as such it's not compatible with the GPL.

> THe condition of making source available under the GNU licence effectively
> stops commercial companies basing product etc. on GNU code and then selling
> only binaries versions i.e. they cannot 'take advantage of the nice souls out
> there writing free code'

Indeed.  And that's a shame.  

I don't _agree_ with the GNU licence in any sense.  But we're stuck with
it.

phil