[liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue
- From: Greg Kearney <gkearney@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 09:56:42 -0700
I am happy to release anything in liblouis to any license that will permit it
wide use.
Commonwealth Braille & Talking Book Cooperative
Greg Kearney, General Manager
605 Robson Street, Suite 850
Vancouver BC V6B 5J3
CANADA
Email: info@xxxxxxxxx
U.S. Address
21908 Almaden Av.
Cupertino, CA 95014
UNITED STATES
Email: gkearney@xxxxxxxxx
On May 15, 2014, at 8:00 AM, John Gardner <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
For a description of the software, to download it and links to
project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com
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