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Re: Question for a FLOSS licensing session


From: Carl Sorensen
Subject: Re: Question for a FLOSS licensing session
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2016 03:15:23 +0000
User-agent: Microsoft-MacOutlook/14.6.9.160926


On 10/30/16 5:40 AM, "Urs Liska" <address@hidden> wrote:

>
>
>Am 30.10.2016 um 20:26 schrieb Edward Ardzinski:
>> Does this matter to the average user?  Probably not.  But some here use
>>LP for more than I do.
>>
>> But I'm not sure why the programming should be separated from the
>>output? 
>
>Because that might lead to the situation that the license applying to
>LilyPond might prevent users from actually using it when they are not
>ready to open source their work.
>And that's definitely not the intention of the GPL.

I have a much different reading of these license terms than you do.

The license never requires that items created by the software be licensed
by the GPL -- only that new versions (or derivative works) of the software
be licensed by the GPL.

An input file created to work with Lilypond (even one that uses an
/include) is not a derivative work of LilyPond, IMO.  So there is no GPL
requirement for the license on that input file.

Now, if you distribute LilyPond along with your input file, you need to
make it clear that LilyPond is GPL.  But if you don't, the user of the
input file is responsible for getting their own copy of LilyPond.

And in the even more restrictive case, when you are just creating a pdf or
a midi or some other LilyPond output file, and that's all you want to
share with the public, you're covered.  This is not a derivative work.

To make what I consider an apt analogy, using gcc doesn't require any
programs you create to be GPL'd.  But making a new version of gcc must be
GPL'd.

Just my $.02

Thanks,

Carl




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