Re: forwarded message from Jeff Licquia
On Sun, 2002-07-21 at 02:42, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
> what i meant, however, (and sorry for not expressing that good enough) is that
> LPPL doesn't pile up names by default, ie simply through forking. That is
> there is no requirement for Alice to put BAZ under LPPL just because FOO or
> BAR was.
This may be your intent, but I'm not sure that this is as clear as you
make it in the license. Indeed, I cannot come to that conclusion
without knowing something about your intent that isn't written in the
license.
To see why, consider the following LPPL file "garbage":
foo
bar
I modify it and call it "garbage2":
foo
bar
baz
I distribute it to my friend Ralph.
Now Ralph modifies it:
foo
bar
baz
quux
The question is: what name shall he give the new file?
Let's assume that I don't care. Thus, this line "baz" is unencumbered.
Of course, the line "quux" is his. But what about the other two lines?
They are licensed under the LPPL, which states:
> If for any part of your program you want or need to use *distribution*
> conditions that differ from those in this license, then do not refer to
> this license anywhere in your program but instead distribute your
> program under a different license. You may use the text of this license
> as a model for your own license, but your license should not refer to
> the LPPL or otherwise give the impression that your program is
> distributed under the LPPL.
Note that *distribution* conditions are waived (except for the filename
thing), but *modification* conditions are not. So, when people modify
files containing LPPLed work, they must honor the copyright on the part
with LPPLed code as well.
Now, the LPPL doesn't deal with "works" as such; it deals with "files".
Thus, a file containing any portion of an LPPLed work must be treated as
if the whole contained LPPLed work, since the "file" in its entirety is
restricted.
Thus, the modification requirement that you rename the file apply to
Ralph as well. It's clear that he can't use "garbage" as his filename,
but there's a good case to be made that he can't use "garbage2" either.
The only way he could make the latter case for sure is by removing all
LPPLed content from the file.
The whole argument revolves around what you mean by "distribution". If
you also mean "modification" when you mean "distribution" in the quoted
paragraph only, then your sense of the license shines through. This
would be inconsistent with other sections of the license, though, such
as:
> An individual file of The Program may bear additional conditions that
> supplement and/or supersede the conditions in this license if, and only
> if, such additional conditions exclusively concern modification of the
> file or distribution of a modified version of the file.
So, in other words, this is another confusing aspect of the license.
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-legal-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: