Hi,
Developers of LoroDux may already know my work on LocateMe (later
FollowMe) whose small code base is part included in LoroDux, I am
FollowMe's creator and copyright holder. The FollowMe code was/is hosted
at http://silentdevelopment.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/LocateMe
I was disappointed that nobody informed me that LoroDux was part based
on my code (at the project start I could have provided assistance) or
that Daniel in his published thesis Ein Orientierungssystem für
Menschen mit Sehbehinderung auf Java ME didn't mention it either
despite referencing LoroDux and some parts of the FollowMe midlet view
design, BluetoothReader.java, GPSDataUtils.java etc.
However, complaining is not the only reason I joined the mailing list, I
would like to inform LoroDux developers/legal people here that the
licencing for LoroDux code as it stands is uncertain and I would like to
clear up at least some of the uncertainty.
By linking FollowMe code LoroDux developers have inadvertently
re-licenced the LoroDux code under the GPL licence, regrettably ignoring
my part's code licence, the CPL 2.0, which specifically states:
A Contributor may choose to distribute the Program in object code form
under its
own license agreement, provided that:
a) it complies with the terms and conditions of this Agreement;
The GPL licence is not compatible with CPL 2.0 licence agreement*, thus
legally the LoroDux developers, and thus OpenStreetMap have no right to
use or distribute my part of the modified code in any form. However, I
can see that LoroDux brings a much greater benefit to the community, and
this the licence clash was not done in bad faith (some source code
headers still contain my licence information), so as the copyright
holder I'm waiving the CPL licence in this instance and permiting dual
licencing either GPL or CPL, whichever the LoroDux developers see
appropriate. Any future work I do on FollowMe or any Android work in
this area, will also have this dual licencing for use by LoroDux (and
will state such).
Having browsed the LoroDux source code, developers should also be aware
that it includes Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) propriety class source
for BufferedReader. This was/is covered under Sun's own licence which if
memory serves me correctly states that any core Java source cannot be
repackaged (e.g. moved out of java.io), redistributed or re-licenced.
Hope this helps clarify things and good luck with future work on this
project,
Benjamin Brown
P.S. I had tried to sign up to the LoroDux developers list instead to
post this but didn't receive a response so I'm assuming the project is
now dead?
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Public_License
___
legal-talk mailing list
legal-talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
