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List:       lilypond-user
Subject:    Re: LilyPond, LilyPond snippets and the GPL
From:       Hans_Åberg <haberg-1 () telia ! com>
Date:       2019-10-31 21:33:23
Message-ID: ECD7778E-877B-42A9-8243-6208E7B14B29 () telia ! com
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> On 31 Oct 2019, at 22:10, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> 
> Hans Åberg <haberg-1@telia.com> writes:
> 
> > > On 31 Oct 2019, at 21:31, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:
> > > 
> > > > All those parts should be LGPL, and also included headers, I believe:
> > > > Not GPL, because that would legal technically force copyright
> > > > limitations on the output, and not public domain, because then one
> > > > could exploit the inputs in ways you do not want. But check with the
> > > > experts.
> > > 
> > > I think this kind of stuff should just be exempt from licensing (namely
> > > declared public domain) like stub code in GCC.  It doesn't survive into
> > > PDF anyway (since PDF is not programmable and so the PostScript-to-PDF
> > > conversion executes the code in question rather than converting it) and
> > > it is very unusual to distribute PostScript these days instead of
> > > executing it right away in the form of some document processing
> > > workflow.
> > > 
> > > So that is indeed something that would warrant getting separate
> > > appropriate licensing attention, but in most use cases it would end up
> > > not being relevant since there are few workflows where a PostScript file
> > > ends up as something to be distributed.
> > 
> > It is only a problem if code survives in the output and is
> > copyrightable. Like glyph designs, for example, there are in the works
> > new microtonal accidentals, the design of which I figure would be
> > copyrightable, and take a long time to develop. Would you want them to
> > be in the public domain? It would mean that the design could be
> > exploited freely without acknowledgement. With LGPL, any altered
> > design must have the same license, but the glyphs can be used freely
> > in publications.
> 
> If I remember correctly, our fonts have already been relicensed under
> some typical free font license several years ago.

That is good. I merely wanted to illustrate the principle, that some stuff may \
survive into the output in copyrightable form. The most explicit example I have in my \
mind is the Bison skeleton file that originally was mostly verbatim, but now is \
processed using M4, and needs to be LGPL, not GPL, nor public domain.


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