Re: Copyright/licensing action plan + a sample [PATCH]

[Graham Percival]

On Sun, Sep 20, 2009 at 09:26:25AM +0200, Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> Am Sonntag, 20. September 2009 09:10:20 schrieb Graham Percival:
> > > Ouch. so as soon as a LGPLv3 version of guile comes out, lilypond can't
> > > use guile any more, because LGPLv3 is not compatible with GPLv2... So,
> > > lilypond then has to switch to GPLv3...
> >
> > No, that's nonsense.  Guile 1.8.7 was still released under LGPLv2,
> > so we simply continue to link to that in GUB.
> >
> > If somebody compiles lilypond from the source and links to guile
> > 1.9 or 2.0, then that's *their* problem.  We're not distributing
> > those versions.
> 
> Putting your head into the sand isn't going to solve the problem. After all, 
> every distribution compiles from source and distributes those versions. You 
> can't seriously expect all distributions to change their build system just 
> for 
> lilypond.

I'm not putting my head in the sand.  Distributions can take care
of themselves.

Now, when guile 2.0 comes out as LGPLv3, I'm sure that
distributions would *like* us to switch to GPLv3.  I'm not saying
that we shouldn't *consider* switching.  In fact, I'll go so far
as to say that it would be *nice and polite* for us to switch.


However, it is false to say that "lilypond can't use guile any
more".  We *can* still use it (albeit an older version), and I'm
not going to panic just because not switch would make redhat's job
harder.  We will switch after serious consideration, at a time
that is convenient for us.

Please note that I'm confident that ultimately we _will_ switch.
But I -- and certain other developers -- disgusted by the shrill
claims that we MUST do X, especially when it turns out that there
is no such legal necessity at all.

> > Now, at some point, there will be some important bug fix or new
> > feature in guile 1.9, which is only published under v3.  *Then*
> > we'd have problems... but wait!  If guile is truly under LGPL, and
> > not GPL, then there should be no problems.  I mean, if you can
> > link to closed-source apps (the whole point of LGPL), then surely
> > a mere GPLv2 app can still link to the library?
> 
> No, because LGPL has additional restrictions. The problem is not that we 
> would 
> be violating guile's license, but lilypond's license does not allow linking 
> to 
> a LGPLv3 library. So basically, you are telling all package maintainers of 
> all 
> distributions to violate the copyright of all lilypond contributors.

No, I am not telling them to do that.  I am saying that, if guile
2.0 comes out and we have not switched, they should link to
guile-1.8 if they want to legally distribute lilypond.

Perhaps there is a problem of language here -- the word "must" is
very strong in English.  For example, "if x is greater than 5,
then it must be greater than 4".  "must" means that there is no
possibility of an alternate option.

In the case of linking to a specific verison number of a library,
I agree that it would be quite inconvenient.  But "quite
inconenient" is not the same thing as "impossible".  So therefore,
the word "must" is incorrect.


I'd also like more details about the GPLv2 linking to LGPLv3
library issue.


> > It would be nice if somebody looked into all these reasons, in a
> > calm and collected way, so that we could see exactly which
> > libraries might "force" us to use GPLv3, which version numbers
> > this started at.
> 
> It is our own restrictive license, where the lilypond developers have 
> practically been saying (by licensing as GPLv2only) that they don't want 
> lilypond to link to any (L)GPLv3 libraries.

Nobody has said that they "don't want" lilypond to link to LGPLv3.
If there is a solid legal reason why GPLv2 cannot link to a LGPLv3
license, please state it clearly.

I am not arguing that there *isn't* such a solid legal reason; I
have not spent an hour reading those licenses recently.  But at
the same time, I am not aware of any such reason.

> > > But then we have a problem with freetype, which
> > > is FTL (BSD with advertising clause, thus incompatible with GPL) or GPLv2
> > > only...
> >
> > I don't think there's any problem with linking to a BSD library.
> 
> It's BSD WITH advertising clause (three-clause version!), which is not 
> compatible with GPL. It is not the two-clause version, which is compatible 
> with the GPL.

I think you mean "four-clause version", but agreed.

Cheers,
- Graham