Re: Artistic and LGPL compatibility in jar files

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

"Anthony W. Youngman" <debian@thewolery.demon.co.uk> writes:

> As I said in another post, you're confusing the licence *grant* with
> the licence *itself*.

It might be clearer to say that the issue is a confusion between the
license grant versus the license terms.

> Let's say I write some software and - as I would - I stick a notice
> that says "this software is licenced v2 or v3". That is my grant.

More precisely, the grant would need to say (words to the effect of)
either:

    You may do X, Y, Z to this work under the following terms:
    foo, bar, baz.

or:

    You may do X, Y, Z to this work under the terms of foobar license;
    see $EXPLICIT_REFERENCE_TO_SPECIFIC_VERSION_OF_FOOBAR_TERMS.

The former is a license grant immediately followed by license terms.
(That's what you get often with very short license terms, such as
Expat.)

The latter is a license grant only, referring the reader to another
document to discover what the license terms are. (That's what you get
often with longer license terms, such as the GPL.)

When people say “the GPL” in the context of licensing, they're referring
to *the set of terms* that make up the GPL. Those terms, floating in a
document, don't grant anything to anyone.

The grant of license must, as Anthony points out, be distinct and
explicit, only applies to some specific work, and can only be granted by
the copyright holder for that work.

-- 
 \           “He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.” |
  `\                                          —Maurits Cornelis Escher |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney