Re: Question for a FLOSS licensing session

[David Kastrup]

Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm right now at the GSoC mentors summit and already had a bunch of
> interesting sessions.
>
> One specific one that is to come this afternoon is a Q&A session about
> FLOSS licensing, done by a FSF lawyer. I want to take the opportunity to
> raise a question that in some way or another pops up around here
> occasionally, circling around the problem that with LilyPond it is often
> difficult to draw a proper line between document content, in-document
> coding and including GPLed code from LilyPond or openLilyLib.
>
> I have tried to write up the case at
> https://git.openlilylib.org/snippets/2, and if someone wants to comment
> on it within the next three hours I may consider it for my questions.

That's mostly nonsense.  The license of LilyPond is irrelevant for
documents compiled with LilyPond.  While there is some new option
including the source code of documents in the PDF, it does not include
parts of LilyPond, so that is again moot.

The only generally applicable consideration is the licensing of the
fonts since they become an actual part of the PDF file.  And of course
the _corresponding_ source code which will in general be under control
of the user.  There are some considerations when LSR code and similar
gets copied into documents: in that case, the source code of the
document might come under the licensing reign of the LSR code (do we
specify anything for it?).

But by and large, the licensing of the tools used for creating some PDF
file are not relevant for the licensing of the end product.  That would
be like a violin maker demanding a share in recording royalties from
instruments he sold.

-- 
David Kastrup