Almost one year ago I wrote about the GPL and in February last year about the GPL versus BSD license.
Today I noticed the following inside OpenSSL code by Eric Young:
The license and distribution terms for any publically available version or
derivative of this code cannot be changed. i.e. this code cannot simply be
copied and put under another distrubution license
[including the GNU Public License.]The reason behind this being stated in this direct manner is past
experience in code simply being copied and the attribution removed
from it and then being distributed as part of other packages. This
implementation was a non-trivial and unpaid effort.
The spelling mistakes have been copied verbatim, so not mine 😉
Anyway, this code is copyright 1995-1997 (the Blowfish part) and one has to wonder what was the exact cause for this notice to be attached.
In the README he writes:
The copyright notices seem a little harsh because I have not spent the
time to rewrite the conditions from the normal SSLeay ones.
Actually, no, this isn’t harsh at all. Instead it’s rude if someone takes your code, removes attribution and slaps on their license and copyright.
// Oliver