[sword-devel] iPhone NDA dropped

[Chris Little]

Nathan Youngman wrote:
> 
> I noticed on the Sword Wiki that:
> 
> 	"All frontends MUST be GPLv2 licensed."
> 	http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/index.php/Frontends:FeatureList
> 
> But I don't believe that to be true. Any GPLv2-compatible license  
> should be fine:
> 
> 	http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses
> 
> However, FSF says Apache and Mozilla licenses aren't compliant, so  
> besides GPL itself, that leaves free non-copyleft licenses like MIT,  
> FreeBSD and zlib.

No. This is absolutely incorrect.

We get discussions about what the terms of the GPL are or why we should 
change the license once or twice a year, so feel free to dig up one of 
the old discussions or confirm this from a third party, such as the FSF, 
if you like.

Sword is licensed under the GPLv2 and only under that version of that 
license. The GPL states that any derived works must give the same 
license terms as those terms under which the original work was licensed. 
It is not permitted to give more/fewer/different rights than exactly 
that set contained within GPLv2. So any derived work based on GPLv2 code 
must be GPLv2. Since frontends are derived works, "all frontends MUST be 
GPLv2 licensed."

The term "GPL compatible" does not mean that you can integrate GPL and 
GPL compatible code and license it under a (non-GPL) GPL compatible 
license. It means that you can integrate GPL and GPL compatible code and 
license it under the GPL (only).

--Chris