Re: Freepats

[Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>]

Ryan Underwood <nemesis-lists@icequake.net> writes:

> I don't seem to be getting mail from the BTS on this bug.  Anyway, it
> seemed to me that the Creative Commons licenses would be more
> appropriate since they were specifically designed to cover media:
>
> This one is just a MIT-ish license:
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/

You may be interested in:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/debian-legal-200404/msg00031.html

which is the summary I wrote describing why d-l decided the cc-by isn't
free.

> This one is a LGPL-like license without going into details of linking.
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/

This seems to have the same problems as the cc-by license.

Brian May said:

>>> Personally, my opinion (depending on the above) would be to use the
>>> GPL, so any modifications to the fonts themselves will remain GPL,
>>> but allow an exception (if required) so music created with the
>>> soundfont isn't restricted. If the GPL doesn't do this, maybe the
>>> LGPL will do so?

Yeah.  As complicated as the situation appears to be with these
"SoundFont" files, a BSD-style license may make sense, if only for
simplicity's sake.  If you do wish to go with the GPL it's probably a
good idea to include an exception for resulting works other than
SoundFont files if you go with the GPL, but it could be tricky to nail
down exactly what you mean by that.  IANAL, of course, so you should get
a lawyer's opinion if that's what you need.

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>
PGP fingerprint: 748F 4D16 538E 75D6 8333  9E10 D212 B5ED 37D0 0A03