Re: Basic legal question: Publication of a fix to psgml

["Andreas Röhler" <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de>]

Am 31.03.2013 13:49, schrieb Florian v. Savigny:
>
> Dear listmates,
>
> although this is a legal question, I am confident enough that most
> people know the answer. It is this:
>
> Some months ago, I fixed the "old-style backquotes" problem in psgml
> (which was fairly straightforward, even if I did not even know what
> backquotes are about), and I had inquired about this on this list
> beforehand. Back then, Stefan Monnier suggested that we should track
> down the other contributors to find out about copyright to see if the
> fix can be put on ELPA. We have tried this, but many of them do not
> seem to be available.
>
> Now, my question is this: Given that Lennart released it under the GPL
> (there is no separate LICENSE file, but all the .el files contain the
> standard sentences to that effect), do I actually need any previous
> contributors' permission to make the fix publicly available? (The
> problem is not that I do not want to ask them, but rather that it has
> turned out to be more time-consuming than I can afford.) Or,
> alternatively, could I simply publish a patch?
>


When using GPLed code, you may simply publish your changed code GPLed again.

Thanks giving another example wrt to the noxious results of copyright assigment policy, which undermines goals of GPL.

Andreas

> The reason I am asking is that at least three other people have
> expressed their interest in continuing to use psgml, two of them in
> private emails to me. It seems a shame to me to let this (in my
> opinion) great package go unused, and on the other hand, I do not want
> to infringe on the rights of those who have written it.
>
> Many thanks in advance,
>
> Florian
>
>
>