John I would suggest if taking your route, that future contributions
then are given with full rights to the organisation then this could not
come up in the future as the organisation would have the rights to
change the license.
However there are words of caution attached to this.
1. The organisation needs to behave in a way that the community agrees
with. This would be to stick to certain principles when relicensing, etc.
2. Contributors need to be happy to grant these rights. You may find
that some decide not to contribute instead of granting those rights. The
behaviour of the organisation may influence this, but some may just not
be happy with granting full rights to an organisation.
This probably would not change much for existing contributions, I think
you really would need to get the permission of the contributors.
From what I understand, permission to change the library source code
back to LGPL2.1 has been recieved and it is only the tables which still
have LGPL3 contributions. As tables are easy to remove, the removal
option is much more practical.
Personally I would go down the route of removing any LGPL3 tables (or at
least any you cannot get explicit permission to change back to LGPL2.1),
and this is regardless of setting up a organisation for the projects in
the future. You might decide to distribute these LGPL3 tables in a
separate optional package people could download, then those who do not
want LGPL3 stuff ignore that optional package and those who want it can
download it.
I am no legal expert and so I might be taking a cautious approach. I am
just uncertain that a no response can be assumed to be that the person
was uncontactable, additional rights need to be granted, but to not
grant them requires no action as it is no change.
Michael Whapples
On 21/06/2016 23:27, John Gardner wrote:
Jamie, there is plenty of case law permitting actions by organizations who have
not heard from all stakeholders provided they have made a good faith effort to
reach them.
John
-----Original Message-----
From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Teh
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 2:29 PM
To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: Proposal for aliblouis organization. (was:
Licensing of liblouis tables )
Two points of clarification:
1. There is definitely a difference between GPL 3 and LGPL 3, but that's
academic here and thus not worth discussing.
2. Even if an organisation existed, you cannot relicense anything where the
contributor has not agreed. Majority is not relevant. This will always be the
case unless all contributors sign an agreement which licenses their code under
specific conditions to said organisation. Again, if you can't get agreement
from someone, your only option is to remove the contribution. This is not
anything complex; it is simple legal rights.
Sent from a mobile device
On 22 Jun 2016, at 1:30 AM, John Gardner <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:For a description of the software, to download it and links to project pages go
Larry, historically, John Boyer borrowed from BRLTTY to get liblouis started,
and we got their permission to change their GPL license to LGPL, so that
liblouis could be used with any software, not just GPL software. A few years
later the LGPL license upgraded from version 2.1 to version 3. None of us
realized that LGPL3 had become a great deal more restrictive than the last
LGPL2 version. I have read LGPL3 and to my non-legal mind, I cannot tell any
difference now between GPL and LGPL. Amazon wants to use liblouis but is not
willing to use GPL or LGPL3 software for good reason. So Christian and I were
convinced to re-license anything with LGPL3 license to LGPL2.1. We posted
requests on the list and contacted every contributor whose address we had. To
this point everyone who responded has agreed to have his/her contributions
relicensed to LGPL2.1, but we have been unable to contact every person listed
as a contributor, apparently including authors of some tables licensed as
LGPL3. They remain in the archive as LGPL3 There really is no liblouis
organization that can make the decision to relicense software whose authors are
not reachable.
It is probably time for liblouis to organize itself into some legally-defined
organization so that such decisions can be made instead of relying on Christian
and a few other long-time contributors to put their necks on the line. The
major copyright holders are ViewPlus, John Boyer's company, and APH. ViewPlus
and John Boyer are the founders, and APH was accepted later as co-owner when it
took major development responsibility for BrailleBlaster and liblouisUTDML. In
absence of other guidance, I propose that these three organizations take
responsibility of drawing up a charter proposal with input from other major
contributors. Then put it to a vote of currently active liblouis participants.
In my opinion, the organization should have a relatively small international
executive board selected from current major contributors and a process for
updating that board from time to time. Any proposal should win support of a
strong majority - we sure wouldn't want to start off with some serious
unhappiness in this excellent group of people. I believe that Amazon will be
willing to contribute to startup expenses. Would APH be willing to accept
contributions for this project until the organization is able to accept its own
funding? As a large non-profit, APH is the obvious choice for this role.
If anybody on the list has better ideas for forming a liblouis organization,
please post them!
John Gardner
-----Original Message-----
From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Larry
Skutchan
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 3:10 AM
To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: Licensing of liblouis tables (was:
Move the library to LGPLv2.1)
It is a shame someone even has to ask this question. The whole intent of
Liblouis is to help make quality braille available on all devices. Why should
someone who wants to use it have to jump through hoops?
This licensing question is tricky and annoying and results in hindering the
mission.
What are our options for smoothing this process?
-----Original Message-----
From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Christian Egli
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 4:59 AM
To: Mulcahy, Marc <mmulcahy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: John Gardner <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>; Bangs, Jon
<jbang@xxxxxxxxxx>; Korn, Peter <pkorn@xxxxxxxxxx>;
liblouis-liblouisxml <liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Licensing of liblouis tables (was:
Move the library to LGPLv2.1)
"Mulcahy, Marc" <mmulcahy@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Well, currently only the source code of liblouis has been changed to"John Gardner" <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:How can we tell which tables are licensed under LGPL V2 Vs. LGPL V3? We'll need
If I understand Christian's post, liblouis is now licensed as
LGPL2.1 except for some of the tables.
additional languages eventually, but UEB would probably be enough to get us
going.
LGPLv2.1. The tables are all still LGPLv3. Two remarks with respect to
that:
1. Somebody needs to go through all the tables, look at the copyright
statement and the revision history and compare this with the list of
contributors that have agreed to re-licensing. Pick the tables where
we have permission to change the license. Send me this list and I
will change the licenses. If you do this before the summer holidays
there is a chance that this will go in the 3.0 release. Contact me if
you need help with that.
2. I'm not a layer but as far as I know the LGPL is about linking. Since
the tables are not linked to your program you might be OK. On the
other hand this might be slippery terrain.
Hope that helps
Christian
--
Christian Egli
Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled
Grubenstrasse 12, CH-8045 Zürich, Switzerland
-----
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