Re: [LAU] Is LS licensed? (was: [LAA] [ANN] gigedit 0.1.0)

On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 15:29 -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 21:07 +0200, Arnold Krille wrote:
> > Am Mittwoch, 17. Oktober 2007 schrieb Keith Sharp:
> > > 2) The inclusion of the additional restriction means that LinuxSampler
> > > cannot be distributed under a licence that is called the GPL. The GPL
> > > FAQ[2] is quite clear on this. Additionally the FAQ states that
> > > software distributed under the GPL + restrictions cannot be linked to
> > > libraries under the GPL because the new licence (GPL + restrictions) is
> > > almost certainly incompatible with the GPL.
> >
> > Which means the linuxsampler guys can't link to their own libgig! Someone
> > should tell them about their problems.
>
> if i write library foo and app bar, i can do whatever the hell i want
> with them, no matter how i license them to you. the GPL is a license
> issued by copyright holders to others to allow them to make copies under
> certain conditions. it is not a self-imposed restriction by copyright
> holders on their own inherent rights to do whatever they want with their
> work.
>
> since christian is one of the authors of LS and the author or one of the
> authors of gigedit, i suspect that your observation doesn't matter much,
> but that would depend on the details of the copyright holding
> arrangement.

Taking a quick look with ldd on my F7 + CCRMA system, LinuxSampler links
with code under the following licences (excluding libgig): LGPL and GPL
+ Runtime Exception (GCC stuff), so no GPL problems here.

But, I am not sure that your observation that because the copyright
holders of LS and libgig are the same they can distribute is completely
correct. As you note the copyright holder can distribute the software
under whatever terms they choose, but I see two problems with the
LS/libgig situation:

1) No one else can distribute LS binaries under its current licence
because they would be in breach of the GPL licence on libgig.

2) I have doubts about whether a copyright holder can distribute
binaries licenced under the GPL that are in breach of the GPL. the
penalty for breaching the GPL is that the licence is removed and the
software cannot be distributed.

I am not even an amateur lawyer so this is getting way beyond me! It
would be nice to have it settled once and for all either LS is
re-licenced under a standard GPL compatible FOSS licence, or someone
asks the FSF for an opinion. The latter might be the nuclear option -
the FSF opinion might cause the LS developers to stop distributing the
software and walk away :-(

Keith.

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Received on Thu Oct 18 00:15:06 2007