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I followed this topic with interest but didn't have anything to add until today. I was looking for some C#/.NET code to support a project and found a nice library in the Code Project. Since this thread had got me worried about using third-party code and licensing, I took a look at the license under which it was released. After reading this license, I think it's a pretty good model and easy to understand. I can use the library as is or derive from it with the restrictions that I don't remove the original author's attribution, I don't try to pass this work off as my own, and I include a link (somewhere) to the license agreement. http://www.codeproject.com/info/cpol10.aspx Mark

You came across the only real problem about re-licensing source code under open source licenses, be it BSD, GPL or whatever. That is that once it has been posted there are typically multiple authors and with that usually also copyright holders (unless it is a trivial patch submission) and in order to change the license or also distribute it under an additional license, you have to get the consent of all copyright holders. Otherwise, unless you have posted the original code under one of the rather artificially crafted licenses as brought up by Shaun, you are always free to grant other licenses under completely different terms, as you are still the copyright holder. A license does typically not relinquish the copyright (in fact the license itself never does but the license document can of course contain verbiage that relinquishes the copyright), that can only be done by a copyright transfer, either by trade such as an employment or "hire for work" contract or by a written statement to release the copyright for instance into the public domain. Also copyright typically expires a certain time after the creator has passed away. But copyright and licenses are totally different things. Copyright (at least in Western countries) automatically is instantiated at the moment when something is created. No registration or whatever has to be done to get it and only an explicit statement can give it away, but that is not what licenses are normally about and certainly not licenses such as BSD or (L)GPL. OpenG allows you to release your code into the public domain but not the OpenG VIs itself, unless you are the original author of them too. And mostly to AQ, although not so much as serious suggestion: Since the attribution clause is such a problem in terms of maintenance, why not getting rid of this altogether and scraping the sentence in the LabVIEW EULA that requires all LabVIEW applications to have an attribution clause to the fact that they are created with LabVIEW? That would save maintenance nightmares for all LabVIEW users too!