Le mercredi 15 février 2023 à 22:12 +0000, Wol a écrit : > On 15/02/2023 15:36, Werner LEMBERG wrote: > > > Code contributed to GNU LilyPond will*always* be under the GPL. You > > can't change the license afterwards. > > > Sorry. This is legal bullshit. If *I* contribute a file to lilypond, and > *I* stick a *BSD* licence on it, the BSD licence does *NOT* give *YOU* > the right to change the licence to GPL. > > Even the GPL itself makes this extremely clear. It explicitly states > that you receive your licence to GPL code - not from the person who gave > you the code - but from the copyright holder themself. If the copyright > holder NEVER GRANTED a GPL licence, how the hell are you supposed to > receive a GPL licence? > > You are correct that I can't change the licence afterwards. But if *I* > *NEVER* licenced that code under GPL, then that code can NEVER be GPL. > > So what you're saying is, I can't take someone else's BSD-licenced code, > MAYBE add stuff to it, and add the result to lilypond? > > Absolutely NO FLOSS licence I can name allows a licensee to change the > licence. (One or two explicitly allow conversion to GPL, but I can't > name them.) The GPL works, NOT because it changes the licence on > everything else, but because it guarantees that by complying with the > GPL, you are also complying with any other licence that it may be mixed > up with. > > Or have the people who curate lilypond made a point of actively > rejecting any and all code without an explicit GPL licence? I would be > very surprised. > > First rule of copyright licencing. You cannot change the licence of > someone else's code unless the original licence gave you permission. As > I said, almost no FLOSS licence gives you that authority. So if the > copyright owner put BSD, MIT, Apache, whatever code into lilypond, then > that code REMAINS BSD, MIT, Apache or whatever. The lilypond BINARY is > *effectively* GPL. I use the word *effectively* because it is under a > mix of licences, but the only licence a distributor can use is the GPL. > Because the GPL guarantees that, by complying with the GPL, you are > complying with all the other relevant licences. > > So the effect of the GPL is that we can safely behave as if lilypond is > completely GPL, while the legal reality is completely different.
I concur with David here: this practice of updating copyright headers is validated by people who are lawyers, unlike any of the participants in this thread. While I don't claim to understand the subtleties, I trust people whose job it is to know best. We should focus on whether a new practice is better for the project, not whether the existing practice is illegal. Let's keep this thread on topic, thanks.
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