> On 31 Oct 2019, at 22:10, David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> wrote: > > Hans Åberg <haber...@telia.com> writes: > >>> On 31 Oct 2019, at 21:31, David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> wrote: >>> >>>> All those parts should be LGPL, and also included headers, I believe: >>>> Not GPL, because that would legal technically force copyright >>>> limitations on the output, and not public domain, because then one >>>> could exploit the inputs in ways you do not want. But check with the >>>> experts. >>> >>> I think this kind of stuff should just be exempt from licensing (namely >>> declared public domain) like stub code in GCC. It doesn't survive into >>> PDF anyway (since PDF is not programmable and so the PostScript-to-PDF >>> conversion executes the code in question rather than converting it) and >>> it is very unusual to distribute PostScript these days instead of >>> executing it right away in the form of some document processing >>> workflow. >>> >>> So that is indeed something that would warrant getting separate >>> appropriate licensing attention, but in most use cases it would end up >>> not being relevant since there are few workflows where a PostScript file >>> ends up as something to be distributed. >> >> It is only a problem if code survives in the output and is >> copyrightable. Like glyph designs, for example, there are in the works >> new microtonal accidentals, the design of which I figure would be >> copyrightable, and take a long time to develop. Would you want them to >> be in the public domain? It would mean that the design could be >> exploited freely without acknowledgement. With LGPL, any altered >> design must have the same license, but the glyphs can be used freely >> in publications. > > If I remember correctly, our fonts have already been relicensed under > some typical free font license several years ago.
That is good. I merely wanted to illustrate the principle, that some stuff may survive into the output in copyrightable form. The most explicit example I have in my mind is the Bison skeleton file that originally was mostly verbatim, but now is processed using M4, and needs to be LGPL, not GPL, nor public domain.