Re: Lilypond & Halfdiminished/Diminished symbols.

[David Nalesnik]

> On 2018-08-07 04:03, David Kastrup wrote:
> > address@hidden writes:
> >
> >> Then it's a good thing that David shared his code as free (as in
> >> freedom[1]) software, so that it can be modified for your unique use
> >> case.
> >
> > What's relevant for this is mostly "in source of an interpreted
> > language", since modifying and using code given to you for your own
> > private use tends to be allowed by most copyright jurisdiction.  The
> > freedom of the GPL kicks in when you want to _share_ your modifications
> > with others, for discussion, for integration into LilyPond, or for
> > other
> > purposes.
> >
> >> The modified file is attached, and example usage is below.
> >
> > Well, that kind of thing (_you_ modifying the copy and reposting on the
> > list) definitely requires the actual freedom of the code.
> >
> > So what are the original terms?  Looking at David's original GitHub
> > page, I see "MIT license".  The terms of the MIT license are quite
> > permissive but contain
> >
> >     The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
> >     included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
> >
> > which hasn't happened here.  So you are in breach of the license and
> > the
> > reference to "freedom" is a red herring.  What's really involved here
> > is
> > that David is a nice guy unlikely to sue people reusing his code and
> > you
> > are relying on that.  Now of course the _spirit_ of the license is
> > "feel
> > free to use it, I don't care" so that assumption is likely pretty good
> > but that does not save you against David having a really bad day.
> >
> > And when talking about licenses, really bad days are what they are good
> > for.  A really bad day may involve bankruptcy and all your private
> > assets being acquired by Microsoft.  That kind of thing often involves
> > a
> > substantial change of mind of the new copyright owner.
> >
> > A license, as opposed to relying on people to stay nice, also protects
> > you against such worst case scenarios.
> >
> > Also many (but not necessarily all) code pieces from David may be
> > substantially derived from LilyPond code code licensed under the GPL.
> > In that case, the derived code cannot be licensed under different
> > conditions without being, in turn, in violation of the code it made use
> > of.

Good grief :(   I selected the MIT license because it's very common,
and in the spirit of, as you write, "feel
free to use it, I don't care."

Seems I'm not the only one--I read this in the openlilylib repo
(https://github.com/openlilylib/snippets/blob/master/LICENSE):

"Since most of the snippets are separate entities,
they can be licensed individially.
There are no official rules on licensing (yet);
We suggest that unless otherwise specified
everything should be licensed under the MIT license
as found at http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT.
Any content of this repository that isn't explicitly
licensed is implicitly licensed under the rules of
this MIT license."

Best,
David N