Re: Additional restriction to LGPL
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
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