On Wed, Jul 30, 2003 at 08:58:02PM +0100, Neil McGovern wrote: [Big snip, I'll keep the two statements for contrast]
> If you modify this library, you have to make sure that the "powered by > HAWHAW" copyright link below the display area is kept unchanged. > > You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that the > > Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by > > this License. > > ---------------- > > http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lgpl.html > Any ideas if this is allowed or not? That depends primarily on whether HAWHAW includes LGPLed code from other sources. I'm not going to go into it in depth here (so I hope that other debian-legal denizens will also respond :), but I have a few questions and comments. 1. Is this "display area" a "copy of the work"? That depends on what the library does. 1a. If the library is modified to such an extent that it no longer has a "display area", what should happen? (Again, depends on what it does, but I can imagine taking a couple of functions from it for use in some other library.) 2. The requirement to keep a specific notice text and link unchanged and in a specific place is much stronger than "You must give prominent notice". 2a. Is this requirement intended as an extra license clause? In that case the work is not compatible with the normal LGPL, and the authors must be careful not to share code. They also can't apply extra license clauses if they inherited code that doesn't have that clause. 2b. Is this requirement intended merely as a clarification? In that case I think it fails to clarify, and it would be better to quote the LGPL directly, or say that the LGPL requires such a notice and the "Powered by HAWHAW" link meets that requirement. 3. From Debian's perspective, if this is an extra license clause, does that make the package non-free? Note that we've discussed a similar clause in PHP-Nuke, but that one referenced the GPL, clause 2c, so the issues are different. Richard Braakman
