Re: [Notion-devel] what we're waiting for

[M R. <mr...@gm...>]

On Mon, 2010-04-12 at 14:30 -0400, Marc Hartstein wrote:
> Excerpts from M Rawash's message of Mon Apr 12 11:25:54 -0400 2010:
> > - fork Ion and change the license (possibly to GPL), this will leave us
> > vulnerable to Tuomo's hostility (assuming he is indeed hostile), since
> > it's basically 'illegal' in light of Tuomo's additional terms (which,
> > according to Tuomo, "take precedence over the LGPL").
> 
> It seems a fork-and-rename is consistent with the intent, if not the
> terms, of the modified LGPL.

intent, maybe, terms, not so sure; if so, i believe Tuomo
"unintentionally" made it impossible to fork Ion under a different
license, that's why we're still in need of a clarification on his part,
and if that indeed was his intention, we have to consider other options.

> It would seem a release under a modified LGPL with the rider that the
> project or its forks may not be renamed to Ion, ion3, or anything which
> would associate it with the Ion project, and may not contain anything
> which refers users to the Ion project or Tuomo Valkonen for support, and
> that this project and its forks may not change to any license which does
> not contain, or invalidates, this rider would be consistent with the
> goal of the license.
> 
> IANAL, but shouldn't this be doable in a reasonably straightforward way?
> The point of the name change is that it and not referring back to ion is
> what's required by the license.
> 
> Yes, it wouldn't be "pure GPL", but if the only additional restriction
> is "can't rename this to Ion or ask Tuomo for tech support, must
> preserve this restriction", is that going to relegate it to
> scary/non-free? It's not restricting a distro from doing anything they'd
> actually do anyway [not like the current ion license].


here's the part that, i believe, makes this scenario un-doable:
"In the text of sections 0-2, 4-12, and 14-16 of the LGPL, "this
License" is to be understood to refer to the LGPL __extended with these
terms__ and, where applicable, possible similar terms related to the
names of other works forming a whole. Sections 3 and 13 of the LGPL are
void. Where contradictory, these additional terms take precedence over
the LGPL."

this means that every single reference to "this License" in Tuomo's code
points to Tuomo's terms (in addition to the LGPL), which makes it
'illegal' for us to replace the license with, say, GPL or something
similar.

this, of course, is based on my own interpretation of the above text,
and is not necessarily correct, so please tell us if you see it
differently.

regards,
M Rawash