Towards a better license for Mutopia

[Bernd Warken]

The MutopiaBSD license is insecure, and thus dangerous.  It does not
protect the edited music against theft.  Moreover, it is inconsistent.
No printed output actually shows the license text as is forced by the
license, nor does any audio output replay the license.  I will not
release my edited scores under MutopiaBSD.

A crucial point is that the tagline field in the header is not protected
against malicious modifications.  The GNU Free Documentation provides
the concept of invariant sections, which would fix this flaw.

I strongly point out that there has to be done something to create a
better license for Mutopia.  If not, I would propose to make Mutopia 
a BSDI project instead of a GNU one.

I admit that it is not an easy task to create a new license for an 
edited score has 4 aspects that must be protected.

1. Programming Aspect
The editing process is programming in the lilypond language, so the
GNU GPL will be sufficient to protect the score sources as programs.

2. Document Aspect
The lilypond score is compiled into a readable form.  This makes the
score a document.  The GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) perfectly
manages the license aspects of printable output.

3. Performing aspect
The MutopiaBSD seems to handle this. 

4. Audio output
Something new has to be created from scratch.

A good Mutopia license must consistently handle all of these aspects.
As far as I see we are forced to either use a set of 4 combined
licenses or a special GNU license for edited music scores must be
created, maybe being called GNU Free Score License. 

Some ideas?

Bernd Warken <address@hidden>