[liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue
- From: "John J. Boyer" <john.boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 12:37:45 -0500
I just checked the copyright notices on the Major components of liblouis. They
do say LGPL 3.
John B
On Thu, May 15, 2014 at 10:23:16AM -0700, John Gardner wrote:
> 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
--
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
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