[ Adding Hubert Figuiere (gnote upstream) to CC, note that he's probably not subscribed ]
Hi Anthony, On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 09:20:44PM +0100, Anthony W. Youngman wrote: > In message <20090408194833.ga5...@thorin>, Robert Millan > <r...@aybabtu.com> writes >>> and a >>> clear violation of Tomboy's license. >> >> Notice license and copyright statements are two separate issues. AFAIK >> LGPL doesn't explicitly require that a license notice is preserved mixing >> code with other licenses like the BSD license does, but I could be mistaken. >> >> Any advice on this from -legal? > > If it's not your code, and the licence does not give you explicit > permission, then you can't change the licence and shouldn't remove the > licence note. > > Note that the GPLs fall in this category! > > The way you "change the licence" with this sort of code is by licencing > your code with a compatible licence. The licence for the resulting > combined work is the "Venn Intersect" of the two licences. If there's no > intersect, then you can't distribute. Does this apply on a per-file basis? It seems we have three different situations: a- old file has no copyright/license statement, and a new copyright/license statement (for Hubert / GPLv3+) was added. b- old file has a copyright/license statement, which is left verbatim since the file wasn't modified (or only minimally). c- old file has a copyright/license statement, the new file adds its own GPLv3+ header and BOTH copyright lines (but not the LGPLv2.1 header). Is any of these at fault? You're saying that C is incorrect because it should include both license headers (and not just both copyright lines)? Is A also at fault because it should say explicitly that the copyright only covers Hubert's changes (even if noone else bothered to assert their copyrights)? > For an example, if a program has three authors, one of whom uses BSD, > the second uses "LGPL 2.1 or later" and the third uses "GPL 3" then the > Venn Intersect is GPL 3, which is the licence that applies to the work > as a whole. However, any recipient is at full liberty to strip out parts > of the work, and use whatever licence the author granted. Yeah, I understand the combined result is GPLv3; the only doubt I have is whether it's necessary to explicitly mention each license. If it's not, is there anything else we should take care of? Thanks -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all." -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org