[liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue
- From: "John Gardner" <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 10:23:16 -0700
So where does it actually say that we are using LGPL3 anyhow? If there is
an inconsistency between the copyright and what somebody has inadvertently
changed on the web site, then it is simply an error that needs to be fixed.
Would that it turns out to be so simple. Christian, do you have insight
into this?
John G
-----Original Message-----
From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John J.
Boyer
Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2014 9:27 AM
To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue
Doesn't the copyright notice say we are using LGPL 2.1? Since this is in
writing, shouldn't it be our official position? It also states that the
software and tables, etc. are copyrighted by ViewPlus and abilitiessoft. I
always expected
that contributors had looked at our files enough to be aware of that.
I asked Dave Mielke of brltty about changing the license. He said no. If
we tried, we'd have to go back 18 years to when I wrote the first Grade
2 translator for brltty. We would have nothing!
John B
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 04:07:23PM +0200, Christian Egli wrote:
> 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
--
John J. Boyer; President, Chief Software Developer
Abilitiessoft, Inc.
http://www.abilitiessoft.com
Madison, Wisconsin USA
Developing software for people with disabilities
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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