From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Daniele Nicolodi Subject: Re: Org-mode exporters licensing Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2015 14:17:23 +0200 Message-ID: <55B62153.4070904@grinta.net> References: <87io962fdz.fsf@mbork.pl> <87a8uigff8.fsf@ucl.ac.uk> <87a8ui2cxl.fsf@mbork.pl> <87twsqeyku.fsf@ucl.ac.uk> <87r3ntvmuq.fsf@mbork.pl> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:60895) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZJhLN-0003P4-L0 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 27 Jul 2015 08:17:33 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZJhLE-0001lN-Qm for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 27 Jul 2015 08:17:21 -0400 Received: from zed.grinta.net ([109.74.203.128]:47187) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1ZJhLE-0001gK-6L for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Mon, 27 Jul 2015 08:17:12 -0400 Received: from macbook-nicolodi.obspm.fr (macbook-nicolodi.obspm.fr [145.238.204.178]) (Authenticated sender: daniele) by zed.grinta.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 6723C60D5 for ; Mon, 27 Jul 2015 12:17:10 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: <87r3ntvmuq.fsf@mbork.pl> List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org On 27/07/15 13:52, Marcin Borkowski wrote: > I disagree. Licensing a tutorial with GPL is a stupid thing to do. > A tutorial may contain code which people naturally mimic (or even > copy). Such things should definitely be in PD. As yourself pointed out in one of your emails, in many legal ordinations, there is no such concept as public domain: you cannot renounce to the copyright on your intellectual production. Therefore licensing something as public domain is not quite possible. If you want to grant the users of your code the most freedom (but do not care about this freedom being carried over to others) the 3-Clause BSD license http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause, the 2-Clause BSD license http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause, or the MIT license http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html are good candidate licenses formulated in the framework of copyright law as accepted internationally. However, you cannot derive your work from some other work distributed under GPL and license it with a more permissive license (as the ones suggested above). What constituted a derived work is however not scientifically defined (and you have been rather terse in describing how your work build upon code released under the GPLv3). In one place you explicitly mention running a query-replace on the source code: mechanical transformations of the source code are considered derived works, even if the end result does not resemble at all the original. I would suggest you to do derive your work from the GPL code and then consult with the authors about its licensing. If you are only using the GPL code as a skeleton, I think they would not have objections (but you could also easily re-implement it from scratch). Other than this I would recommend you to refrain from harsh comments on a matter on which you hold strong ideas but weak knowledge (as most of this thread demonstrates). Especially if your positions seem detrimental of the Copyleft model, and you are asking for help in a mailing-list devoted to a very successful Copyleft program. Cheers, Daniele