On 01/15/2012 12:57 PM, Aurélien Leblond wrote:
The GPL is v2 in the code as it's the same one as coming from AMS.
As Ralf rightfully remarked, you have to check the original code for the exact wording of the license. If it's GPLv2+ ("GPLv2 or later") you're free to choose either GPLv2+ or GPLv3+, as the authors explicitly gave you the permission to do that.
Unfortunately, the AMS manpage indeed seems to indicate that it is licensed under GPLv2 only as the "or later" clause is missing there, and I can't find any other statement in the latest released tarball or on the website clarifying the license.
So your code probably needs to be licensed under GPLv2 only. GPLv2 is still fine as a license (unless you're bothered by modern absurdities like DRM, tivoization and software patents, that is). It poses a problem if people want to use your code in their GPLv3+ projects, though -- they can't.
So my interpretation is that if you'd like to relicense under GPLv3+ you'll have to contact Matthias Nagorni and get his explicit written permission. According to the AMS manpage he's the only copyright holder and I can't find any other copyright notices in the code, even though there's no doubt that AMS has had a lot of contributions from Fons and other people.
If I'm not mistaken, Matthias has long left for greener pastures, though. Matthias, are you still lurking here? Maybe you can clarify the license?
- I'm not even sure of what is the difference between the version 2 and the version 3 of the GPL.
There's plenty of information about that on the web. From the horse's mouth: http://gplv3.fsf.org/rms-why.html.
- The code is ported from AMS. Am I aload to change the license just like that?
The license statement along with the license text tells you exactly what you're allowed to do. In this case, as the "or later" clause is missing, you're bound by the terms of the GPLv2, as set forth in the accompanying COPYING file. Specifically, term 2 of the license tells you that you have to relicense your derived work under the terms of the same license.
Disclaimer: IANAL either and this isn't legal advice, so when in doubt consult your lawyer. ;-) But this is how I read the license terms of AMS, to the best of my knowledge.
HTH, Albert -- Dr. Albert Gr"af Dept. of Music-Informatics, University of Mainz, Germany Email: [email protected], [email protected] WWW: http://www.musikinformatik.uni-mainz.de/ag _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
