On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 01:10:09AM +0100, Matěj Cepl wrote: > Hi, > > I was contemplating to use LGPL for a small project of mine (in the > end I've decided otherwise for other reasons) but I was again struck > by the sheer nonsense of attaching 481 lines long COPYING.LGPL to > 194 lines long script. Would there be anything wrong with replacing > the standard LGPL copyright blurb with this acknowledging an > existence of the Internet? > > This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or > modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public > License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either > version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later > version. > > This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, > but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of > MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the > GNU Lesser General Public License for more details. > > A copy of the full GNU Lesser General Public License is > available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses\ > /lgpl-2.1.html (or some better URL).
Not if you're the original licensor of the work in question. Otherwise, the orthodox and, it seems, generally accepted best-practices view is that you actually do have to include a copy of the license text. The FSF has even provided a decent policy argument over this: there are still many people in the world who have no or unreliable net access, yet such people may receive copies of (L)GPL-licensed software. Where the orthodox view has absurd results (some uses of the GPL on JavaScript or fonts come to mind) then I think a different answer may be reasonable. (See RMS's paper on the "JavaScript Trap" from a few years ago.) But I wouldn't consider it necessarily absurd to include a longer license text with a shorter script. It may call into question the choice of the LGPL to begin with though. (That may not be an unreasonable guideline: for a new project, never use a license that is lengthier than the code you would be placing under it.) Incidentally I believe there is a scholarly article by a UK lawyer (I believe Neil Brown) that addresses this subject in serious detail, published, I believe, in a past issue of IFOSSLR, so it should be readily available. - Richard _______________________________________________ legal mailing list [email protected] https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
