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List:       lyx-devel
Subject:    The LyX licence
From:       Angus Leeming <leeming () lyx ! org>
Date:       2005-02-25 14:23:27
Message-ID: 200502251424.41030.leeming () lyx ! org
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Dear all,

please excuse the personal email, but I'm trying to do something about the 
messy state of the LyX licence and need your help.

LyX is currently licenced under the GPL with a huge hole blowing it wide apart 
so that it could be linked against the closed source XForms library. See 
http://www.lyx.org/about/license.php3. Legal opinion has it that this 
exception does not apply only to the XForms library. Instead, anything and 
everything is allowed to link against the LyX source code, defeating the 
whole point and purpose of the GPL. Moreover, the exception is no longer 
needed as XForms (and indeed Qt) are available under the GPL.

To make a messy situation even messier, it's not even certain whether the 
current license is valid at all, as the necessary permissions may not have 
been obtained before the change was made to the original GPL.

In light of all this, I'm asking whether I can have your permission to add 
your names to http://www.lyx.org/blanket-permission.txt:

"The following people hereby grant permission to licence their contributions
to LyX under the Gnu General Public Licence, version 2 or later."

so that we can have a permanent record of those people who have contributed 
code to LyX and who are happy for this code to be licenced under the GPL.

Kind regards,
Angus

ps, if you reply to lyx-devel@lists.lyx.org, we'll have a permanent record of 
your response.

pps. I'm afraid I've had to trawl the web to get your address (the one we have 
is out of date). If I've got the wrong guy then sorry!

A.
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