Re: Overview of copyright issues

[Don Armstrong]

On Wed, 09 Sep 2009, Joseph Wakeling wrote:
> (6) Confusion has come from
> 
>   (i) a Debian copyright file for the package, apparently last
>       updated in 2004, stating that Lilypond is 'v2 or later'

This is now my problem,[1] so I'll attempt to get it addressed at some
point in the future. [I'd certainly like to see Lilypond at least
clear up some of the issues so that the above can become correct.]

(There are a significant number of files distributed in lilypond which
are under v2 or later, or v3 or later, as well as things like
input/mutopia/claop.py, which isn't even Free Software, as it cannot
be modified.[2])

Furthermore, the licensing statement in COPYING is immensely
ambiguous, as it only states "GNU PUBLIC LICENSE" without specifying a
version, or anything.

>  (1) All new files added to the code or docs must contain an
>      unambiguous copyright AND licensing notice: I suggest in this
>      case GPLv2 or later for code, and the GFDL 1.1 or later for
>      docs.

I'd personally prefer it if documentation was at least licensed under
the same license as the code to allow for easily inclusion of code
examples (and to obviate the problems I [and Debian] have with
specific aspects of the GFDL.) It certainly can be dual licensed under
GFDL >= v1.1 + GPL >= v2, though.
 
>  (1) How well have the copyright notices for individual files been
>      maintained?

As near as I can tell, they haven't been maintained at all. Very few
of them actually have the boilerplate that they should have, which
makes this kind of thing very difficult.

But by all means, please help work on this. It'll certainly make my
life easier when I have to go through and audit the code for inclusion
in Debian (which I naïvely assumed had already been done before I took
over maintenance.)


Don Armstrong

1: I've taken over maintenance of lilypond from Thomas Bushnell;
hopefully I'll be able to keep up with you all. If any of you run
across Debian specific issues, feel free to file bugs in our BTS or
let me know personally.

2: Not sure if that's problem for you all, but it certainly means that
Debian can't distribute it; it'll be removed from my source package as
soon as I get a chance to do so.
-- 
Your village called.
They want their idiot back.
 -- xkcd http://xkcd.com/c23.html

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu