On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 03:24:03PM +0100, Andre Poenitz wrote: > On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 09:18:02AM -0500, Dr. Richard E. Hawkins wrote: > > > But that would still mean you need approval of all contributors to change > > > the licence, wouldn't it?
> > No. Permission was never obtained to switch to the current purported > > license. Lyx has always had a big hole in the GPL that allows this, and > > the hole cannot be fixed without permission of all contributors. > So what do you think is the current valid license? > GPL? (probably not) > GPL with "may be linked to xforms"? > GPL with "may be linked to whatever"? It's very close to this. I sat down, analyzed what happened, applied the law, and wrote the qualification to the license to describe what happened. I did *not* create the license; neither I nor anyone else (without consent of all developers ever) could possibly do this. The short version is that when he announced it as GPL, his actions contradicted this, and revoked the "boilerplate" language of the GPL that were inconsistent with his actions. Everyone that ever contributed code contributed under the actual license, not the GPL. However, as it held itself out as GPL, third parties would be able to take it as GPL (as the developers woudl be "estopped" from asserting the modified license). > Of course I remember your complaints a while ago, but I was not too > interested in licensing issues back than. So I remember you said something, > but not what. Pointer to archive perhaps? My original writing came in response to the "critical bug" at debian (license impurity). Lars included the paragraphs sometime while I was at Iowa State, which means sometime between 1996-1999. I don't know when the change to the current, legally wrong, claim of license was made, but I suspect if we checkout from 2000 we'll find it. (we don't actually have a searchable mailing list archive from the late 90's, do we?). hawk -- Richard E. Hawkins, Asst. Prof. of Economics /"\ ASCII ribbon campaign [EMAIL PROTECTED] Smeal 178 (814) 375-4700 \ / against HTML mail These opinions will not be those of X and postings. Penn State until it pays my retainer. / \
