@Rob,
I am not certain what this has to do with the original question.
In any case, I agree that copyleft projects tend to be rather casual. (The
complaining about the AOO use of ALv2 for the work it makes for LO downstream
is informative, although LO has dependencies on a number of ALv2 components.)
I am also uncertain whether GPL requirements on derivatives, especially their
binaries, are followed in an impeccable way among the many copyleft projects.
The closest to a CLA for TDF LibreOffice is an e-mail paragraph such as this
one:
" All of my past & future contributions to LibreOffice
may be licensed under the MPL/LGPLv3+ dual license."
I have no idea how the TDF deals with provenance. None of us do anything to
confirm that a contribution is original (in the copyright sense) and the
contributor has the right. Acceptance is in good faith. Still, TDF had the
good fortune of starting with a distribution that was already LGPLd and the
third-party dependencies were already accounted for by Sun and Oracle.
Since I stay clear of [L]GPLd code myself, I have nothing more to say about
that. (I do remain concerned about the haphazard license materials in the
Writing Aids that are bundled with AOO binaries. Fortunately, it appears that
AOO is not directly accountable for the provenance of those materials.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Weir [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2012 09:08
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Legal question about (re)licensing
On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 11:48 AM, Dennis E. Hamilton
<[email protected]> wrote:
> To be precise, the practice is for new contributions to be dual licensed as
> LGPL and MPL by the contributor. It remains the case that the main code body
> is under LGPL3 with the usual variations for third-party material
> incorporated in the release.
>
But the "practice" is not backed by a CLA or a code audit. So what
exactly LO has is "license soup" as far as I am concerned. I can't
touch it, though corporations that have no proprietary software
business may be unconcerned about such hygiene issues. But I'd note
that such an approach will limit the project's success, since large
corporations, even if just using open source software, have their own
risk calculus to consider. So the work we do on code pedigree audits
benefits not just the big bad software vendors. But it also benefits
users.
-Rob
> - Dennis
>
> PS: Personally, I don't see any advantage to the MPL provision, since LGPL is
> not convertible to MPL. I think there is or was some TDF misunderstanding
> about the possibility of "relicensing." As far as I know, only the owner of
> copyright has a choice about licensing. E.g., Oracle licensed the
> OpenOffice.org code base that was under its copyright to Apache in a
> different way than it had licensed to others. That's separate from the
> general but narrow availability of that code under the LGPL from both Sun and
> Oracle.
> The license that code arrives into someone's hands under is the license
> that must be honored, even for public-domain works (which require no license
> and will remain public-domain forever). If a work is specifically
> multi-licensed, one can choose which one(s) to honor.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Weir [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2012 08:12
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Legal question about (re)licensing
>
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 10:58 AM, Claudio Filho <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> I am not a lawer but i did a work of licenses some time ago[1], and i
>> read many of main licenses, and a thing that i listened in all was
>> that only the license holder can changes his work. So, my ask is:
>> Oracle gave permission to TDF to add GPL and MPL for LibO?
>> [1]http://claudiocomputing.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/comparativo-entre-grupos-de-licencas/
>>
>
> When LO says they are under MPL, I think they mean that only for new
> contributions, where the contributor agreed to place their
> contribution under MPL (or whatever). The remainder of the code, the
> original OOo code, is under LGPL.
>
> -Rob
>
>> Or this is a "dead letter", where i can get a software and do what i
>> think/wish?
>>
>> Best,
>> Claudio
>
