Hi,
Afaik, changing license conditions can only be done by the copyright owners.
In general these are the original authors of the work. I believe this is one
the reasons the FSF requires a transfer of copyright from the authors to the
FSF. I've searched at
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq
https://sfconservancy.org/
https://opensource.org/faq
https://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html ;(draft, and getting a bit stale
too)
but couldn't find a quote supporting my position :( . Maybe someone else has
better internet search engine skills. And I'm pretty sure once you ask on
the debian-legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx you'll get a well informed response
soonish.
Joe is only allowed to publish the code under the new license conditions
_after_ he got permission from all copyright holders (authors) of the work.
But: IANAL . Consult professionals if you want to have the final word...
HTH, Bye,
Joost
On Mon, Sep 02, 2019 at 04:19:58PM +0200, Piotr Bański wrote:
Hi all,
Please bear in mind that the final quoted statement ("People can choose
which license to follow.") is not exactly correct. The way the license terms
are formulated right now does not appear to allow a choice -- users *have
to* follow both licenses.
This could be changed with an explicit "OR" in the availability statement,
possibly with some further explanation. Compare the TEI licensing terms at
https://tei-c.org/guidelines/licensing-and-citation/#section-2
-- we've spent a while consulting lawyers about how we can handle the
duality of licensing, and it's done by explicitly allowing a choice (OR)
rather than intersection (AND), the latter of which can be extremely
difficult or simply impossible to uphold given the openness inherent in the
clause ("and any later version").
The OR would allow Sebastian to publish at Debian under GPL.
Best,
Piotr
On 31/08/2019 20:32, Sebastian Humenda wrote:
Hi all,
Joe asked for clarification on this matter and hence I bring it to our list.
Joe has taken over dan-eng development successfully and already cleaned up
and
extended this dictionary substantially. In his last change, I found the
following:
- <p>Available under the terms of the <ref
target="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html";>GNU General Public
License ver. 3.0 and any later version</ref>.</p>
+ <p>Available under the terms of the <ref
target="https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html";>GNU General Public
License ver. 3.0 and any later version</ref> and all changes after version
0.3 (0.3 included) is also released under Text of Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and any later version (dual
license).</p>
To summarise Joe's view, the dual-licencing is fine because the mentioned
licence is compatible with the GPL. See below this email for an excerpt.
While
it is true that works can be dual licenced, there are two things which have
to
be kept in mind
1. The dual licence must be known upfront, that is at the beginning of the
work
so that authors are aware of both licences.
2. If a 2nd licence shall be added, all previous authors have to give their
consent. This is required because otherwise people could just use an
arbitrary GPL/LGPL program, apply changes, relicence the changes under a
less restrictive licence and are fine. LGPL and GPL are simply too
strict
here and do not allow this particular case, except for all authors
agreeing.
This might sound like nitpicking but I think we really should be careful
about
licences. I will not able to upload the dictionary to Debian with the current
licence change.
Thanks all
Sebastian
===
Joe wrote:
GPL is copyleft, meaning you have to distrubute any derivative works of the
original also under the GPL. If you use a GPL library in your project, that
creates a derivative work of the library, and your entire project has to be
licensed under the GPL.
One exception: if it's the LGPL (Lesser/Linking GPL) then dynamically
linking the library does not create a derivative and you're free to license
how you want.
One caveat: you can also license your work under annother license. As long
as people can get it under GPL, that satisfies the GPL requirements, and
you can dual-license with MIT, for example. People can choose which license
to follow.
--
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