Re: Org-mode exporters licensing

[Greg Troxel <gdt@ir.bbn.com>]

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Daniele Nicolodi <daniele@grinta.net> writes:

> 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.

[many excellent comments.   As a nit, to reuse another's work under the
GPL under a BSD license, you need more than them not to object; you
need their affirmative permission.   And if much of org is assigned to
the FSF, as I believe it is, that means the FSF's permission.  That's a
use of resources about something that doesn't really matter much.]

Indeed.  A major point of which Marcin seems unaware is that licensing
in a project in is more than a legal matter.  The license terms are a
declaration of intent for how the code will be shared, and people
contirbute under an expectation that those norms will be followed.

In particular, the GPL is designed to allow sharing only when the
recipients receive rights to further share (and more).  In other words,
not only is the code Free Software, but any derived works (that are
distributed) will also be Free Software.  With a BSD-style license, or
PD, derived works may or may not be Free.

Regardless of licensing, you can't make a derived work from copyrighted
code and have it be PD.   And as Daniele points out, new works being PD
only works in some jurisdictions (hence CC0).



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