Hi Tom,

On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Tom Callaway <tcallawa@redhat.com> wrote:

I don't think so. The email quoted from Tuomo is two years older than
the repost, so it is unlikely that it is in the context of Notion (also,
he never mentions Notion in it). I'm guessing he sent it out to the Ion
mailing list independently of Notion's existence (possibly before Notion
came about? not sure on the timeline), but we cannot assume it implies
acceptability of the Notion name.

Really, someone needs to ask politely. :)


So handwavey isn't preferred in legal realms? :)

I spoke with upstream. They provided some interesting background but nothing explicit. They did think it was worthwhile to contact Tuomo for clarification. Their comments made me think he may be willing to consider a vanilla LGPL.

Since Tuomo is busy and has indicated in the past that he isn't interested in dealing with Ion-related topics, I'd like to minimize the amount of his time that I have to take up. So to be clear, what is required to sufficient proof of his consent to change licenses and/or at least bless the Notion project? Is a simple e-mail enough? Is a PGP/GPG signature required? I was thinking of asking Tuomo to:
... grant permission to the Notion project to distribute any and all Ion(tm)-related material, including but not limited to primary and ancillary code and documentation, under the official LGPL version 2.1 as specified at https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.html

And if he doesn't agree to the above, to at least:
... agree that the Notion name is sufficiently different from the Ion(tm) name as to be in compliance with the Ion(tm) license.

Are these sufficient? Are there other loose ends I should try to tie up?

I apologize if I'm belaboring the point - I don't really "have a setting" between handwavey and pedantic. :)

Thanks again for your time and help!

Regards,
Jeff