Re: Towards a better license for Mutopia

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

address@hidden writes:
> That's very easy.  MutopiaBSD allows to modify the file if the copyright
> notice is kept.  Alright, so some bad guy modifies the tagline to say
> that he himself is the copyright owner, but the copyright notice in the
> source file is not changed.  So this is a legal action according to 
> MutopiaBSD.  Now he wil create a readable file format (e.g. Postscript)
> that pretends he is the copyright owner.  Next, he is free to say that
> this output is an originary product of its own and that everyone copying
> the printed score is a criminal.  The original copyright in the source
> file is still unchanged.

> This bad guy is doing legally right, altho such a beast would be a damn
> bastard.  No judge will be able to help the original author.

I don't quite understand this scenario. Everyone can still can legally
produce printed output from the original file. I don't see in what way
the original author should be helped.

> Moreover, I propose that the people responsable for licensing in 
> Mutopia contact Richard Stallman for creating a better license (based 
> on FDL, with audio and performance aspects added).

We've had quite a few licensing debates, and they all generate more
heat than light. The general characteristics are:

* There never is consensus.

* The discussion generates nothing in terms of more printable music.

My personal opinion is that content which is originally in the
public-domain (this is what mutopia is all about) should not come with
additional licensing restrictions (like those of the FDL), when it is
transcribed into a format such as lilypond.  I think that MutopiaBSD
fits this requirement nicely, and I sincerely doubt the value of
making the licensing any more cloudy by adding FDL and GPL.

Ultimately, we can never be sure that Bad Things don't happen, but I
happen to think that we have done our best with the current
licenses. Time will tell if anyone there's going to mutopia scores
"stolen".

(Given the current output quality of LilyPond, that day is
still far off, unfortunately.)

BTW, nothing is stopping you --in fact, I encourage you to it-- from
putting music on the web under your license, and listing it at

        http://appel.lilypond.org/wiki/index.php?DownloadLilyPondScores




-- 

Han-Wen Nienhuys   |   address@hidden    | http://www.cs.uu.nl/~hanwen/