[liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue
- From: "John Gardner" <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 08:00:30 -0700
Christian, you ask:
So could we try to convince these big corporate lawyers that LGPL3 isn't all
that bad?
John G: No we cannot unless you have a few million dollars to file a test
lawsuit. So it is just counter-productive to argue whether LGPL3 is or is not
okay. Unless of course the person doing the arguing is willing to file that
lawsuite.
And you continue:
> If the big corporations will not use liblouis even though some of us think it
> is okay with LGPL3, we are making life difficult for blind people who use
> their software.
But what else are these big corporations going to use instead?
John G: Not use braille.
Sorry, but this LGPL mess has fully subverted the purpose of this consortium.
John Boyer and I started it with the stated purpose of making good braille
available to everybody. We either find a way to revert to LGPL2 or we will
just have to start a new project under a more acceptable license. Those are
the only two alternatives
I therefore invite anybody who has made a contribution to liblouis or
liblouisutdml since the change to LGPL3 to speak up if they object to having
their contributions distributed under LGPL2. If anyone does object, we must
then find a way to remove those contributions. This mailing list reaches
nearly everybody interested in liblouis, and it would therefore be considered a
good faith effort to reach everybody if ever challenged in a court.
John Gardner
-----Original Message-----
From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christian Egli
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 7:07 AM
To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue
On 05/15/2014 03:43 PM, John Gardner wrote:
> Christian, you say you are not a lawyer, and that is unfortunately all that
> needs to be said. The big corporate lawyers are terrified of LGPL3 just as
> they were terrified of GPL. Which is why we switched from GPL to LGPL. It
> does not matter one whit that you or I think LGPL3 is okay.
A problem that we have (legally speaking) is that we would have a very
difficult time to trace all the changes to their originating author. For
example we have tables that were checked in by me or by John that were authored
by somebody that sent in the table via the mailing list we might be able to
track these down). Or there are probably changes that happened before liblouis
was under source control (might be hard to find because there might be no
record of this whatsoever). Since we do not assign copyright we probably have a
bunch of unknown copyright holders.
If we wanted to change the license we'd have to ask all of them which is near
impossible since we do not know them.
The alternative would be to rip out their contribution which is hard since in
some cases we do not even know what they contributed.
We might be able to rip out all the changes since the change to LGPL3 which
would be a pitty.
So could we try to convince these big corporate lawyers that LGPL3 isn't all
that bad?
> If the big corporations will not use liblouis even though some of us think it
> is okay with LGPL3, we are making life difficult for blind people who use
> their software.
But what else are these big corporations going to use instead?
Thanks
Christian
--
Christian Egli
Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled Grubenstrasse
12, CH-8045 Zürich, Switzerland
-----
Tag der offenen Tuer:
Die SBS laedt Sie herzlich ein: 28. Juni 2014 von 9 bis 16 Uhr.
Mehr Informationen erhalten Sie unter http://www.sbs.ch/offenetuer
For a description of the software, to download it and links to
project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com
For a description of the software, to download it and links to
project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com
Other related posts:
