Hi,
I was contemplating to use LGPL for a small project of mine (in the end I've decided otherwise for other reasons) but I was again struck by the sheer nonsense of attaching 481 lines long COPYING.LGPL to 194 lines long script. Would there be anything wrong with replacing the standard LGPL copyright blurb with this acknowledging an existence of the Internet?
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
A copy of the full GNU Lesser General Public License is available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses%5C /lgpl-2.1.html (or some better URL).
Best,
Matěj
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 01:10:09AM +0100, Matěj Cepl wrote:
Hi,
I was contemplating to use LGPL for a small project of mine (in the end I've decided otherwise for other reasons) but I was again struck by the sheer nonsense of attaching 481 lines long COPYING.LGPL to 194 lines long script. Would there be anything wrong with replacing the standard LGPL copyright blurb with this acknowledging an existence of the Internet?
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
A copy of the full GNU Lesser General Public License is available at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses%5C /lgpl-2.1.html (or some better URL).
Not if you're the original licensor of the work in question.
Otherwise, the orthodox and, it seems, generally accepted best-practices view is that you actually do have to include a copy of the license text.
The FSF has even provided a decent policy argument over this: there are still many people in the world who have no or unreliable net access, yet such people may receive copies of (L)GPL-licensed software.
Where the orthodox view has absurd results (some uses of the GPL on JavaScript or fonts come to mind) then I think a different answer may be reasonable. (See RMS's paper on the "JavaScript Trap" from a few years ago.) But I wouldn't consider it necessarily absurd to include a longer license text with a shorter script. It may call into question the choice of the LGPL to begin with though. (That may not be an unreasonable guideline: for a new project, never use a license that is lengthier than the code you would be placing under it.)
Incidentally I believe there is a scholarly article by a UK lawyer (I believe Neil Brown) that addresses this subject in serious detail, published, I believe, in a past issue of IFOSSLR, so it should be readily available.
- Richard
On 27.2.2012 01:29, Richard Fontana wrote:
It may call into question the choice of the LGPL to begin with though. (That may not be an unreasonable guideline: for a new project, never use a license that is lengthier than the code you would be placing under it.)
Is this anti-Lesser GPL (pro pure-GPL) rant, or do you mean that authors should use for shorter things MIT/BSD/some-other-short-license?
Best,
Matěj
On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 07:08:34AM +0100, Matej Cepl wrote:
On 27.2.2012 01:29, Richard Fontana wrote:
It may call into question the choice of the LGPL to begin with though. (That may not be an unreasonable guideline: for a new project, never use a license that is lengthier than the code you would be placing under it.)
Is this anti-Lesser GPL (pro pure-GPL) rant, or do you mean that authors should use for shorter things MIT/BSD/some-other-short-license?
It's not specific to LGPL, but more a comment on where relatively simpler licensing may be more appropriate.
- RF
-
Matej Cepl -
Richard Fontana