Re: Org-mode exporters licensing

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2015-07-27, at 11:31, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> On Monday, 27 Jul 2015 at 10:59, Marcin Borkowski wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> See how stupid this whole copyright law swamp is?
>>
>> What if I reuse just the basic structure of sentences in the docstrings,
>> like in "Subject + verb + preposition + object"?  Do I have to use GPL
>> then, too? ;-)
>>
>> And what if I reuse the naming convention of the functions, but to make
>> life easier, I'll just copy large fragments of code and do
>> a query-replace on them?  (This is serious.)
>
> Yes, this whole issue can be quite messy.  The GPL is somewhat viral in
> nature and was (probably, arguably) intended to be so.  Laudable goals
> but sometimes overbearing but let's no go there...

Yes, it's not the discussion I'd like to get into now.

> My view would be that if you use any of org code and you want to release
> that code to the outside world, you will need to license the result
> under GPL.  Given your intent to make your code public domain, this is
> not a bad way to go in any case.

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.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University