[liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: License issue
- From: "Peter Nilsson Lundblad" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "plundblad@xxxxxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 16 May 2014 08:13:52 -0700
James Teh writes:
> On 16/05/2014 6:21 PM, Christian Egli wrote:
> > From where I sit both licenses look pretty
> > similar. They are still both the LGPL.
> As I noted in a previous reply, the controversial difference is I
> suspect the "installation information" provision in section 6 of the
> GPL. That essentially means that it is a violation of the GPL/LGPL if
> users don't have all of the required instructions, keys, etc. without
> restriction to install a modified version of the library. That is a big
> problem for iOS and other walled garden environments.
>
Hi,
DISCLAIMER: I am an engineer at Google, not a lawyer.
I have been working on BrailleBack, which is an app that can be used on
Android to get braille support. It uses liblouis for braille translations
and brltty for display drivers.
As a data point, the clause mentioned above prevents liblouis to be
preinstalled on Android devices. This means that a user would not be able to
set up a device by himself using braille only (because you might need some
basic settings to be able to download, such as a working network). Note that
there might be other, more technical, reasons as well, but the '3' in LGPL
3 is a real issue in this case. The only alternative would be to find a
replacement.
Now I understand that relicensing might be a lot of work and I am not asking
anyone to do it unless they think it benefits the project. I am just
trying to highlight a case where the current license choice may have
implications for actual users.
Regards,
//Peter
For a description of the software, to download it and links to
project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com
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