Hi Dominik;
Leaving aside the context, let me make a few points from a legal
perspective:
1) As you point out, you can only change the license on versions of the
code which have not yet been released; you can't retroactively change
the license on versions already released. So this would only impact
the next releases.
2) Also as you point out, you can only change the license on files
which you alone hold copyright to: that is you wrote them in the
first place and are the only one who's modified them.
3) If you do change the license to "Dominik-GPL", then your copyright
will become legally incompatible with the rest of the FVWM code,
which is licensed under the GNU GPL. The GNU GPL does not allow
restrictions such as the ones you mention. Remember that even the
old BSD license was incompatible with the GPL until Berkeley
rescinded the advertising clause, and that was minor compared with
the changes you are proposing.
That means that we cannot make any new releases of FVWM until either
(a) all the incompatibly licensed code is removed, or (b) the
license is changed back to vanilla GPL, or (c) all the rest of the
code is also changed to allow distribution under the terms and
conditions of "Dominik-GPL". Any attempt to release the code would
be violating its own license and thus illegal (if you are the sole
copyright holder you can of course violate your own license: you are
not bound by licenses on code you have copyright to... but no one
person has copyright to all the FVWM code).
4) Even assuming we could get everyone with a copyright stake in FVWM
to agree to change the license to make releasing a new version
legal, this license is not free according to either the Open Source
definition or the Debian Free Software Guidelines, which means that
FVWM would have to be dropped from a number of Linux distributions.
5) Not only that but some of the libraries or other "3rd party" code
that FVWM links with may be covered by the GPL as well (we'd have to
check this though), and if so that would mean we could no longer
link FVWM with that code.
The situation sucks but I don't know that this is the right approach for
speaking out about it. In the end it's of course up to you as it's your
code.
Peace.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Find some GNU make tips at:
http://www.gnu.org http://make.paulandlesley.org
"Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
--
Visit the official FVWM web page at <URL:http://www.fvwm.org/>.
To unsubscribe from the list, send "unsubscribe fvwm-workers" in the
body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To report problems, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
