[liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: Changing the license of liblouisutdml to Apache 2.0
- From: "John Gardner" <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 10:13:07 -0700
Hello all. We had serious problems at the beginning of liblouis, because it
was gpl-licensed due to its use of BRLTTY gpl code. The BRLTTY people were
kind enough to give permission for liblouis to switch to the lgpl license.
This made it possible for many more companies/agencies to use it. GPL is so
contentious these days that many lawyers advise their clients, particularly
small companies without large legal resources, to just steer clear of GPL. If
the BRLTTY people had not allowed that license change it would really have
crippled use of liblouis. I'm not sure that changing the license again is
quite so essential. Personally I am perfectly happy with the Apache 2 license
but have no quarrel with people who do not. It is more permissive, and that
has drawbacks as well as advantages.
We sure would like for developers of iOS apps to be able to include various
flavors of liblouis in apps intended for blind people. It will be a major blow
to all of us if Apple's policy means that cannot happen. Since there are
objections to changing the license, perhaps someone could enlighten the people
on this list as to whether the Apple store policy forever means that liblouis
cannot appear in iOS apps. And perhaps someone can help me understand why
anyone would object to lgpl-licensed libraries anyhow.
John Gardner
-----Original Message-----
From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christian Egli
Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2012 5:30 AM
To: John J. Boyer
Cc: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Re: Changing the license of liblouisutdml to
Apache 2.0
"John J. Boyer" <john.boyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> ViewPlus Technologies and Abilitiessoft are thinking of changing the
> license of liblouisutdml from LGPL to Apache 2.0, the same license we
> use for BrailleBlaster. This will make it more widely usable. Does
> anyone have comments?
First off: why? What are you going to gain? LGPL is already very liberal. Is
this supposed to help with the Apple app store issue?
Generally there are a number of social and technical problems with this:
1. All copyright holders need to agree with this. This includes the people that
changed liblouisutdml but also the people that changed liblouisxml (on which
liblouisutdml is based). That would be John, Eitan, James, Bert, Michael
Whapples and me. You need to track down these people and ask them. If they do
not agree you will have to take their code out. As for me I would not be very
happy with such a change (the reasons are explained below for those who are
really interested).
2. We use code which is licensed LGPL and which is written by other people.
Namely the handling of options in xml2brl is based on GNU getopts. I guess you
could rip that code out and go back to hand crafted option parsing. I think
there is other stuff to do with getting the version number. This was all done
to support standard options handling so we could generate man pages. Generally
all the stuff that uses gnulib would have to be changed to go back to coding it
ourselves.
So, why I like the LGPL better than the Apache 2.0 license? Generally the LGPL
is a copyleft license which means that we offer the right to distribute copies
and modified versions of liblouisutdml and requiring that the same rights be
preserved in modified versions of it (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft). Also LGPL is a "weak copyleft"
license which means (quote from wikipedia):
"Weak copyleft" licenses are generally used for the creation of software
libraries, to allow other software to link to the library, and then be
redistributed without the legal requirement for the work to be distributed
under the library's copyleft license. Only changes to the weak copylefted
software itself become subject to the copyleft provisions of such a license,
not changes to the software that links to it. This allows programs of any
license to be compiled and linked against copylefted libraries and then
redistributed without any re-licensing required.
Apache license on the other hand is not copyleft or in the words of wikipedia
"permissive". It only requires preservation of the copyright notice and
disclaimer. Basically you can do almost whatever you like with the code, i.e.
the sweat that I put into it.
This is not true to my personal intentions. I want that the rights I give to
users of liblouisxml to be preserved in modified versions of liblouisxml.
Thanks
Christian
--
Christian Egli
Swiss Library for the Blind, Visually Impaired and Print Disabled Grubenstrasse
12, CH-8045 Zürich, Switzerland
-----
Tag der offenen Tuer
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Mehr Informationen erhalten Sie unter www.sbs.ch/offenetuer 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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