[linux-elitists] How is it possible to have a dual licensed Linux Distro.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting James Sparenberg (james@linuxrebel.org):

>   I came across this today on Linux Devices.  Being less that savvy on the 
> license side, I'm curious how someone thinks this can be done, as it looks 
> like they are re-licensing GPL'd software.  
> 
>   The first line in this article 
> -- http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3953873333.html is "A company 
> maintaining a dual-licensed Linux distribution for x86-based routers ....."  

The question you need to ask:  "_What_ copyrighted works specifically 
are being dual-licensed?"  

If you were to look into details of the situation, I suspect you'd find
that Vyatta doesn't purport to dual-licence the portions of the
composite router product that it uses under other people's copyleft
licences, only those portions either BSD-licensed
(http://www.xorp.org/license.html) or over which it holds sole
copyright.[1]

Vyatta's is said to have constructed its "Open Flexible Router" product
"by integrating parts of more than 60 open source projects, as well as
its own code."  (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3953873333.html)

These guys spoke at SVLUG.  They seem both smart and on the up-and-up.

[1] Nothing prevents you from dual-licensing a codebase you own outright
under multiple, diverse licenses.  Each licence attaches to its
respective codebase instance.