Inheriting or disinheriting GPL license conditions

[Matthew Flaschen]

Greg Soper wrote:
> Hi
> 
> I do extensive work with SugarCRM - only on the Open Source version
> of it.
> 
> SugarCRM, from Release 5.0 is GPL 3. Previous releases were the Sugar
>  Public License (SPL) which was essentially GPL2 with attribution
> clauses and was not recognised by OSI.

At least the latest SPL was definitely MPL + attribution
(http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/SPL).  There's a huge difference between
GPL2 and MPL, disregarding for a moment the "attribution" issues.

> If I remember correctly from a seminar I attended a couple or ten
> years ago .... if you modify and distribute GPL2 code, the whole code
> base is covered by GPL2 ... the changes inherit the GPL2 license
> conditions.

That's correct, but again SPL was based on MPL.  MPL is a "weaker"
copyleft.  It says "Any new file /that contains any part of the Original
Code/ or previous Modifications." [must be put under MPL]. So a totally
new file does /not/ have to be put under MPL.

You should also note that MPL is not compatible with GPL2 or GPL3.

Matt Flaschen