Re: LilyPond, LilyPond snippets and the GPL

[David Kastrup]

Hans Åberg <address@hidden> writes:

>> On 31 Oct 2019, at 21:31, David Kastrup <address@hidden> 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.

-- 
David Kastrup