Re: RFC: stop doing "grand replace" updates to copyright years

[Jean Abou Samra]

Le mercredi 15 février 2023 à 22:12 +0000, Wol a écrit :
> On 15/02/2023 15:36, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> 
> > Code contributed to GNU LilyPond will*always*  be under the GPL.  You
> > can't change the license afterwards.
> 
> 
> Sorry. This is legal bullshit. If *I* contribute a file to lilypond, and  
> *I* stick a *BSD* licence on it, the BSD licence does *NOT* give *YOU*  
> the right to change the licence to GPL.
> 
> Even the GPL itself makes this extremely clear. It explicitly states  
> that you receive your licence to GPL code - not from the person who gave  
> you the code - but from the copyright holder themself. If the copyright  
> holder NEVER GRANTED a GPL licence, how the hell are you supposed to  
> receive a GPL licence?
> 
> You are correct that I can't change the licence afterwards. But if *I*  
> *NEVER* licenced that code under GPL, then that code can NEVER be GPL.
> 
> So what you're saying is, I can't take someone else's BSD-licenced code,  
> MAYBE add stuff to it, and add the result to lilypond?
> 
> Absolutely NO FLOSS licence I can name allows a licensee to change the  
> licence. (One or two explicitly allow conversion to GPL, but I can't  
> name them.) The GPL works, NOT because it changes the licence on  
> everything else, but because it guarantees that by complying with the  
> GPL, you are also complying with any other licence that it may be mixed  
> up with.
> 
> Or have the people who curate lilypond made a point of actively  
> rejecting any and all code without an explicit GPL licence? I would be  
> very surprised.
> 
> First rule of copyright licencing. You cannot change the licence of  
> someone else's code unless the original licence gave you permission. As  
> I said, almost no FLOSS licence gives you that authority. So if the  
> copyright owner put BSD, MIT, Apache, whatever code into lilypond, then  
> that code REMAINS BSD, MIT, Apache or whatever. The lilypond BINARY is  
> *effectively* GPL. I use the word *effectively* because it is under a  
> mix of licences, but the only licence a distributor can use is the GPL.  
> Because the GPL guarantees that, by complying with the GPL, you are  
> complying with all the other relevant licences.
> 
> So the effect of the GPL is that we can safely behave as if lilypond is  
> completely GPL, while the legal reality is completely different.



I concur with David here: this practice of updating copyright headers is
validated by people who are lawyers, unlike any of the participants
in this thread. While I don't claim to understand the subtleties, I trust
people whose job it is to know best.

We should focus on whether a new practice is better for the project, not
whether the existing practice is illegal. Let's keep this thread on topic,
thanks.

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