My last message was based on labeling inside the Moses source. Based on the Moses home page http://statmt.org/moses page, "Moses is licensed under the LGPL." with a link to: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html. Moses is also a combined work, so section 4 "Combined Works" applies. Section 2 under that license states:

           2. Conveying Modified Versions.

   If you modify a copy of the Library, and, in your modifications, a
   facility refers to a function or data to be supplied by an
   Application that uses the facility (other than as an argument passed
   when the facility is invoked), then you may convey a copy of the
   modified version:

     * a) under this License, provided that you make a good faith
       effort to ensure that, in the event an Application does not
       supply the function or data, the facility still operates, and
       performs whatever part of its purpose remains meaningful, or
     * b) under the GNU GPL, with none of the additional permissions of
       this License applicable to that copy.

Lane, I agree that the copyright owner(s), and only the owners whoever they are, can agree to publish a module (like the tokenizer) under another license. In that case, a new fork is published under the new license but it does not revoke the master's original license. The two separate forks are simultaneously published and licensed separately. Any changes the owners make to the new fork must be applied regressively the master under the original license. Any changes made by any non-own to any fork must be republished under the respective license for that fork. Labeling a module with multiple license terms has been done, but creates huge complications. There are likely conflicts that, if it were contested, a court could invalidate all licensing.

Ken, ownership is tricky. It's governed by different sovereign laws. The laws in the USA are different than the laws in Thailand, which may be different from those in the UK. In most cases I know of, a contract's IP assignment clause declares who owns the work-for-hire. If ownership is not assigned in the contract, the respective law kicks in. The law in the USA assigns ownership to the author if the author is an independent contractor, and assigns ownership to the employer if the author is an employee. The law in Thailand is exactly the opposite. It assigns ownership to the employee if the author is an employee, and assigns ownership to the employer if the author is an independent contractor. I do not know the laws in the UK. The only clear path is to assign ownership in the work-for-hire contract. That's why I recommended that someone check with the University's intellectual property office.

All that said and regardless of ownership, you're safe to act on your own when you publish change under the license terms of the fork you changed. That's the heart-and-soul of open source licensing.

Tom



Date: Wed, 30 May 2018 04:03:05 +0800
From: liling tan<alvati...@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Moses-support] Dual Licensing or relicensing Moses
To: Matt Post<p...@cs.jhu.edu>
Cc: moses-support<moses-support@mit.edu>

Do note that I did receive a "no" from one of them so I'm not exactly sure
whether everyone's "yes" will change the "no".

Meanwhile, I think it's shouldn't be a problem since the Python port of
Moses' tokenizer does exist separately.
Users just have to make sure that they don't mix it up with more permissive
license when redistributing code.

Regards,
Liling

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