[liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue

  • From: Mesar Hameed <mesar.hameed@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 16 May 2014 10:45:49 +0200

ls -1 *.c | while read file; do
    echo "$file"
    git annotate -L/either\ version/,+2 $file
done

Produces:

compileTranslationTable.c
2723ada1        (Eitan Isaacson 2008-03-31 20:57:43 +0000       16)   Free 
Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any
80be8fd3        (Eitan Isaacson 2008-01-16 01:14:49 +0000       17)   later 
version.
lou_backTranslateString.c
47b84be2        ( James Teh     2008-09-18 00:28:29 +0000       16)   Free 
Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any
80be8fd3        (Eitan Isaacson 2008-01-16 01:14:49 +0000       17)   later 
version.
lou_translateString.c
9bd6be29        (Christian Egli 2013-10-31 10:38:55 +0000       16)   published 
by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
9bd6be29        (Christian Egli 2013-10-31 10:38:55 +0000       17)   License, 
or (at your option) any later version.
wrappers.c
48523e72        (John Boyer     2010-06-18 03:55:28 +0000       11)   published 
by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the
48523e72        (John Boyer     2010-06-18 03:55:28 +0000       12)   License, 
or (at your option) any later version.

So this doesn't look like a recent/accidental change.

thanks,
Mesar

On Thu 15/05/14,10:23, 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

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