Re: Potential copyright problem in EIEIO improvement

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     So in order to derive GPLed code from the GPLed Open Dylan code and
>     assign the copyright of the new code to the FSF, the Open Dylan authors
>     have to sign papers.
>
> Right.  However, it would be obnoxious to ask them to assign their
> copyright to the FSF, because they didn't intend it as a contribution
> to GNU Emacs.  Therefore, we must not ask.  That puts us in a bit of a
> bind.

I think that in this case asking for a disclaimer should be more than
sufficient: after all, the code in question has been used as a template
but not used verbatim.  So at most an original code citation in the
comment should not be covered by Emacs copyright, but the resulting
Elisp code should be sufficient original expression.

But since the original code has been released under the GPL (which
one?), a separate disclaimer should likely not even be necessary: the
GPL _is_ a license to "relicense" under the GPL.

> So I will ask our lawyers if it is ok if we use taht Dylan code
> without getting papers for it.  Now I know all the facts I need to
> tell them.

Likely.

-- 
David Kastrup