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andless - issue #45

Unclear licensing information


Posted on Jan 22, 2011 by Helpful Elephant

The license field here on Google Code states that this project is licensed under the Lesser GPL; but the the parts included from Rockbox are licensed under the regular GPL (version 2 or later), which requires all derivative works to be under the same license.

To quote from the license itself:

"2 b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."

I suggest:

1) Selecting "GNU General Public License v2" here on Google Code as the license for the project.

2) Explicity specifying the license for all source files (e.g. src/net/avs234/*.java) by putting a comment with a license notice at the top. Individual files can use any license (BSD, MIT, Apache2, LGPL, etc.) as long as it's GPL compatible.

Comment #1

Posted on Jan 23, 2011 by Happy Cat

Initially, it was GPL v2.

I changed it to LGPL on requests of certain developers working on commercial products who would have been unable to use my library code otherwise.

I have added all license files missing in Rockbox-derived subdirectories. As far as I can see, the only GPL-licensed code from Rockbox is that of the ape decoder.

Is it sufficient to keep the project under LGPL, or I must change it to GPL anyway? In the latter case, I'd be glad if you explain what I should do next to keep it LGPL'ed like Rockbock (which somehow uses the GPL-licensed code).

Comment #2

Posted on Jan 23, 2011 by Happy Cat

(No comment was entered for this change.)

Comment #3

Posted on Feb 15, 2011 by Happy Cat

Seems to be resolved.

Status: Done

Labels:
Type-Defect Priority-Medium