The alternative and simple and immediate solution is to do as James suggests
and remove the tables contributed by folks we cannot contact. What kind of
impact does that actually have?
This certainly deserves some additional consideration, and your proposal sounds
like a reasonable approach, but I am no lawyer either.
-----Original Message-----
From: liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:liblouis-liblouisxml-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John Gardner
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2016 11:30 AM
To: liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [liblouis-liblouisxml] Proposal for aliblouis organization. (was:
Licensing of liblouis tables )
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:
"John Gardner" <john.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
If I understand Christian's post, liblouis is now licensed as LGPL2.1
except for some of the tables.
How can we tell which tables are licensed under LGPL V2 Vs. LGPL V3? We'll
need additional languages eventually, but UEB would probably be enough to get
us going.
