[PD-dev] Porting, copyright and licensing

Marc Lavallée marc at hacklava.net
Wed Jan 4 16:42:36 CET 2006


Le 4 Janvier 2006 05:51, Jamie Bullock a écrit :
> Hi,
>
> Whilst we are on the subject of licensing and copyright, I have a related
> question. If a section of code is ported into another programming
> language, does the ported code qualify as a new piece of software or a
> modification of existing software? I ask this, because clearly it has
> implications for who owns the copyright to the ported code.
>
> For example, I have written an external that uses a Fast Cosine Transform
> algorithm originally implemented in Fortran, with the code released under
> the ACM license
> (http://www.acm.org/pubs/copyright_policy/softwareCRnotice.html).
> Clearly, if a port into C (as a PD external) is classed as a modification
> of the existing Fortran code, then I have to license the external under
> the ACM also. That is, unless the author agrees to relicense the code
> under the GPL. However, if the PD external is classed as an entirely
> separate piece of software, just using the same algorithm, could it be
> relicensed without consent?
>
> Does anyone know the law/etiquette regarding this?

The ACM license is a bit like a the CC attribution/non-commercial license. 
I'm not sure it can be considered a free software license (it's not listed 
on gnu.org), but I believe it can be used along with free software. For 
commercial use, you must contact the author and negociate a licensing 
agreement. For non-commercial use, you can distribute the source or 
binaries, even modify and/or integrate the source to your project, but the 
original code must be indentified as being the property of ACM. So I think 
you can licence your part as GPL and use the ACM part as instructed by the 
ACM license.
--
Marc
 




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