[PD] Legal restrictions for apps

[Pagano, Patrick]

I need expr~ for my apps

-----Original Message-----
From: pd-list-bounces at iem.at [mailto:pd-list-bounces at iem.at] On Behalf Of Jonathan Wilkes
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2013 3:34 PM
To: pd-list at iem.at
Subject: Re: [PD] Legal restrictions for apps

On 10/04/2013 01:44 PM, Miller Puckette wrote:
> One (not so minor) note on this... "expr" is copyright IRCAM (hahrokh 
> Yadegari was working for IRCAM at the time) and is also included in 
> Max, so it might be sbject to agreements between IRCAM and Cycling '74.
>
> I was under the impression it was under GPL, not LGPL.  I just looked 
> and saw that, indeed, the LICENSE.txt file says LGPL and the expr 
> source code print out "GPL" on startup.  The reason I think it's 
> actually GPL is that that is how IRCAM released it -- as part of jMAX, 
> years ago.  The current code is based on that original code.  Although 
> it was extensively reworked by Shahrokh, I presume the GPL terms under 
> which he was working required him to release the result under GPL too.
>
> So for the moment at least, I'm afraid FUD rules.

My vote would be to keep all the original GPL licenses in Pd vanilla's expr, and to remove the LGPL readme.  GPL was the licensed under which expr was originally released, so we can reasonably assume all the copyright holders agreed to that license.

If the consensus was that it should be changed in order to accomodate Pure Data builds on IOS, then everyone who wants to use expr on IOS should pool their resources and hire a lawyer to explain what is and isn't allowed under the LGPL and Apple's TOS.  The lawyer should also find out if it was indeed possible to change the license to LGPL in light of what Miller brings up about the original licensing.

That's two unknowns wrt LGPL expr, and they won't be solved by revising the source nor IANAL discussions.

Best,
Jonathan

>
> cheers
> Miller
>
> On Sat, Oct 05, 2013 at 02:27:37AM +0900, i go bananas wrote:
>> I am the one who originally pushed for expr license change, and 
>> contacted apple, and the original expr licensees, etc....
>>
>> here's what happened, in summary, from my foggy memory:
>>
>> i contacted the original author of expr, Mr Yadegari, and explained 
>> the situation that expr was in a strange limbo between vanilla pd and 
>> pd-extended.  It's included in vanilla, but there license is 
>> different, etc etc...
>>
>> When we looked into it, we found that the original license for expr 
>> was in fact LGPL, not GPL, as stated in the pd documentation.  (So, 
>> as Iohannas suggests, a bug report might be a good idea)
>>
>> When i asked about the possibility of changing to the pd style BSD 
>> license, Mr Yadegari was totally fine with that, and said that is 
>> what he had wished anyway.
>> However, the expr license was now under control of the university, 
>> and i would have to contact the relevant people to ask about changing 
>> the license to BSD.
>>
>> In the meantime, i had called Apple, and asked about the legality of 
>> GPL, and they said GPL was not permitted, as you need to release the 
>> code with the app, and they don't have that facility built in to their app store.
>>   Then when i asked about the possibility of LGPL, which doesn't need 
>> the source code included in the package, they sent me from person to 
>> person, and i never got a straight answer... basically they told me 
>> that if i wanted to use LGPL, i would have to hire a lawyer to speak 
>> with their lawyer.
>>
>>
>> So....it seemed like changing the expr license to BSD would be the 
>> best option.
>> I contacted another developer who Mr Yadegari referred me to, and we spoke
>> about the possibility of changing the license.   He said no one had touched
>> expr for years, but couldn't see any reason why not to change it.  He 
>> said he'd need to check with the relevant department at the 
>> university, and with the other developers who had taken on the caretaking of expr.
>>
>> And then, university summer holidays started, before i could go any 
>> further, and i never heard back again about the license.
>>
>> So, as far as i understand, the expr developers i spoke to all seemed 
>> fine with the idea of BSD, but we just never got as far as getting 
>> everyone together and making the change.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 1:52 AM, IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig at iem.at> wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/03/13 02:35, Dan Wilcox wrote:
>>>> - I leave out [expr] & [expr~] for now. The license in the expr src
>>> folder is LGPL,
>>>> but the license in the source headers is GPL and the following is
>>> printed to console
>>>> when first loading the external: "expr, expr~, fexpr~ version 0.4
>>> under GNU General Public
>>>
>>> there has been extensive discussion on this with the original 
>>> authors
>>> (*all* copyrightholders) of [expr] (most of it forwarded/CCed to 
>>> this list), and IIRC correctly the final result as that expr has 
>>> been re-licensed under the LGPL.
>>> for me this means that the code *is* LGPL, even if on load the 
>>> splashscreen says that it is BSD4 or the microsoft EULA.
>>>
>>> but of course it is annoying to have contradictory license 
>>> information staring at your face (esp. when you have to argue with 
>>> someone like apple), so i suggest to fix the headers and the printout.
>>>
>>> please file a bug-report (eventually including a patch that does the
>>> fixing)
>>>
>>> fgmasdr
>>> IOhannes
>>>
>>>
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