In message <4ab5056a.9010...@webdrake.net>, Joseph Wakeling
<joseph.wakel...@webdrake.net> writes
[1] Where the licensing issue might be important is this: what if
someone forks Lilypond and adds a bunch of their own code with a
different but compatible license statement -- like GPLv2+? It helps
clarify the situation if each file has a specific license statement
rather than just relying on 'files should be assumed to be under license
X unless otherwise stated'.
I don't know whether it's been done, but what if someone has added code
into lilypond itself under a compatible licence such as GPLv2+?
(What do you do if, when asking authors what licence they want you to
use, they say "v2+" or "v2/v3", not "v2-only"?)
The other motivation is if there _is_ a desire to alter the license it
might be useful to be able to do this incrementally, e.g. move to (say)
GPL2+ all those files where the authors give permission as soon as that
permission is given.
That's moving forward. The thing that concerns me is that, in my
(non-lawyer) opinion, if any non-v2-only code HAS made its way into
lilypond, it's a GPL violation to stamp a v2-only licence notice on it.
If you want a simple explanation of that, if A grants v2+ to his code,
then B gives the code to C saying it's v2-only, firstly B has no right
to do that (the GPL says that C gets their licence from A, not B), and
secondly the GPL says you can't take away rights granted by the
copyright owner. Changing from v2+ to v2-only is such a forbidden change
(taking away the recipient's right to change licence).
Cheers,
Wol
--
Anthony W. Youngman - anth...@thewolery.demon.co.uk
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