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

[Don Armstrong]

On Sun, 20 Sep 2009, Graham Percival wrote:
> 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?

The problem isn't with libguile being LGPLv3; the problem is with
lilypond being GPLv2 only. The copyright infringement would be an
infringement of lilypond's license, not libguile's.

Lilypond would either need a linking exception to link with libguile
(or ideally an exception to link with any GPLv2+ or LGPLv2+ work) or
would need to change its licensing accordingly. All of which would
require by-in from all of lilypond's contributors.[1]

As far as distributions go, I know I personally don't want to maintain
guile-1.8, so if at some point it stops being maintained in Debian,[2]
someone else will have to step up and maintain it for us to continue
distributing lilypond.


Don Armstrong

1: This is YA example of why choosing GPLv2 only is a bad idea if all
you want to do is get on with your coding; the worst thing that could
happen in future versions of the GPL is that more rights were given
instead of less, since anyone who wanted would always be able to use
the code under GPLv2.

2: It's currently being maintained, but since I'm not doing the work,
I can't guarantee that that will continue to be the case.
-- 
Guns Don't Kill People.
*I* Kill People.

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