Re: Future of openLilyLib

[Tim McNamara]

On Sep 22, 2020, at 10:20 AM, Partitura Organum <partitura.org@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Karsten […] mentioned the lilypond-files: "OpenLilyLib is licensed under the 
> GPL. Thus, the copyleft effect forces that all Lilypond files which include 
> OpenLilyLib files, have also to be distributed under the terms of the GPL.". 
> Thus, if I use OLL in my lilypond and I want to make my lilypond files 
> public, I have to do so under the GPL v3 license. 
> Or so Karsten states.
> Secion 5 of GPL v3 does seem to imply this. The question here is whether 
> typing something like "include oll.ily" in your own ly-file makes your 
> ly-file a derivative work of OpenLilyLib. If "yes" the GPL v3 license demands 
> you license your ly-file as GPL as well if you ever publish it. If "no", well 
> then it is for you to decide which license works best for you.

Calling what amounts to a subroutine does not cause the subroutine to own the 
output, which is IMHO all that is being done with "\include oll.ily” (or any 
\include commands) so the answer to the question is “no.”  One may publish 
one’s input file, although the utility of that is questionable except as a 
teaching tool, under whatever license one wishes.  That may cause a cognitive 
conflict with the GPL for some users.  One may publish the output of the 
application under whatever license one wishes, including standard copyright 
within the jurisdiction where one lives.  Were the GPL to require creators to 
license their output under some specific copyleft arrangement, few people would 
use any GPL software.  And indeed, there may be people/entities that refuse to 
use free software due to that misunderstanding.  Lilypond and/or the GPL does 
not own the user's input or output files- any more than Microsoft owns all 
documents written in Word- as that would of course contravene the notion of 
freedom in free software.

I am curious- is there a parallel discussion among LaTeX users?  I’ve never 
used LaTeX nor been part of discussions in the that community, but the 
operating similarities are strong (a text input file with formatting markup 
producing an output file such as a PDF).

If one creates a word processing document using a font, whether copyleft or 
copyright, does the document publishing have to adhere to the licensing of the 
font?  Of course not.