Re: Proposing libchamplain as an external dependancy for GNOME 2.28

[John Stowers <john stowers lists gmail com>]

On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Christian Persch <chpe gnome org> wrote:

Hi;

John Stowers wrote:
> Unfortunately, the original TangoGPS author, [...], ignores any

> emails from me, other osm-gps-map developers, or users, that request
> permission to change the license of osm-gps-map to LGPL.
>
> I guess the lesson here is to never create a library, derived from a
> GPL project, unless you are sure that the original copy write holders
> are open to re-licensing those parts of the code to LGPL, aka mature
> and reasonable people.

There are good reasons to choose GPL even for a library[1]. The
code's author not agreeing to relicense his GPL'd code under LGPL does
not give you permission to insult him as ›unreasonable‹ or ›immature‹
like you did above.

I think just ignoring such relicencing requests is perfectly
fine behaviour, esp. if, as you seem to imply above, multiple
persons have pestered the author about it.

About 6-10 emails over 12 months is not really pestering either. I can assure you that I was polite in all my emails, and also had contact with the author early in the project, keeping him in the loop with some design decions, asking for his opinion, etc. It was only when the issue of license arose that the ignoring started. I did not just turn up and say "hey I forked your project, you should relicense it".

I do not believe that ignoring a polite request for considering a licensing change is a mature response.

Anyway, this thread is OT now.

John

 

       Christian

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

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