[jsword-devel] Alkitab Bible Study 0.9 released

[Jonathan Morgan]

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 12:25 AM, Peter von Kaehne <refdoc at gmx.net> wrote:
> Jonathan Morgan wrote:
>>> 6) Licensing - not my area of knowledge - but do you think it is correct
>>> to link a public domain programme to a GPL library? Or is Java with its
>>> multiple separate jars designed in a fashion that this is not a matter
>>> of concern?
>>
>> Two points on this:
>> 1. Public domain software is fairly obviously GPL compatible (see
>> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
>> for a list of GPL compatible licenses).
>
> Incorporating PD into GPL yes, but GPL into PD appears to me
> counterintuitive as the GPL requirements will trump. Certainly BSD into
> GPL is a one-way street (remember that fight last year about wireless
> code from OpenBSD in Linux?)

It is a one way street if anyone chooses to modify the GPL'ed version,
but they could just as easily be modifying the public domain version.
If they release their changes under public domain then it remains
public domain (though one questions whether it will actually be useful
without the GPL'ed library).

Jon