Lovely Public Community License (LPCL)

[Robin]

Still, what is not GPL-compatible about it? As posted above the protection of the name is basically trademark-protecting, which is GPL-compatible.

That's what I thought too: derivatives of projects under LPCL can be licensed as the makers of the derivatives wish, including GPL. They just need community approval if they wish to use the same name.

[Skofo]

Still, what is not GPL-compatible about it? As posted above the protection of the name is basically trademark-protecting, which is GPL-compatible.

If I'm not mistaken, a GPL-compatible license is one that can be converted into GPL. The GPL does not give special rights to the LOVE community to author works under their original names, which is the reason I doubt that this license is GPL-compatible.

Also, thanks for clarifying, Robin.

If you guys still insist on using this license (and it turns out GPL-incompatible), perhaps you could add a clause to allow people to relicense the work under a GPL-compatible license? If you do that, I'm golden.

EDIT: Sorry I'm making such a big fuss over this. I sincerely hope I'm not offending anyone, because that is not my intention.

[osuf oboys]

Robin, what you are asking for is completely different than what Linus and Guido are for their projects. You want to give one person the power to rule all projects which are under this license. This is a VERY bad idea. Is Linus in charge of all of the software for Linux and does Guido own all of the code created with Python? No, that is a dumb idea, and noone would even create software for Linux or with Python if it were that way. You will not find many informed software developers who would license their hobby work under a monarchical license.

Also, Linus and Guido may be the heads of their respective projects, but they do not state that anywhere in the licenses of those projects. They don't need to.

The community is tied to a particular work, not every work of the license. Usign LPCL does, for instance, not imply that the LPCL development team has any say about your project.

I don't like the idea of this license that much, even without Robin's suggestion. It over-complicates things for little reason.

Could very well be the case. I think the reason is significant but perhaps the desired functionality is available for the usual licenses?

What happens if the developer of a project does not want to have other people release work under his work's name but people vote to do it anyway?

Since the project "belongs" to the community, they are free to do so. It would be bad the other way around. If he does not wish for this to happen, he should use a different license or add the necessary clauses to the work's policy. Note that if the developer chooses to add to a project and release it under a different name, then the community possesses no additional rights.

What if a developer goes inactive during v0.2, the community turns it into v0.5, then the developer comes back and wants to work on his project from where he left off?

He's free to continue from version 0.2 provided that a copy of that version is still around. He can, however, not call the new releases 0.5 and if he wants to call it 0.6, then he'd better sort it out with the community how the two branches should be differentiated. If the developer has the power to according to the policy, he may ask the 0.5-version to be called something else, e.g. xy-0.5.
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What if that developer wants to change the license?

That's fine but if he wants to change the license of the original software, he must change to a newer version LPCL (which he may create himself but be voted down on). I changed it so that any new version must be released under a license that includes the clause that any derivative work is marked as a derivative of the previous version.

It's also possible that a gang of friends could team up and ruin CAMERA, LUBE or other libraries/works through the power of democracy

Yes, it is, but if they constitute the majority of the community, so be it. You could always release the module under a different name in such an event.

, or even one person through the power of internet proxies.

Yes, but it would be to break terms or the law to pose as more than one legal person, just as it would be to pose as an original developer.

Plus I'm not sure that this is actually a free software license,

How so? It is less restrictive than, e.g., Apache and what you can do with GPLv3.

and I'm almost positive that it isn't GPL-compatible; I enjoy linking my GPL software only to other GPL-compatible software, so now I most likely cannot use CAMERA or LUBE for my games, which is a shame because they're brilliant.

I consider GPLv3-compatibility a requirement of the license. I will read through GPLv3 in its entirety to see if we need to change the license or not.

No offense to the authors of this license, but I recommend everyone to license their works under more popular licenses which have been looked over by lawyers and free software organizations and used in many projects, such as GPL, X11, zlib and the like.

I would not advise using GPL for permissive rights. zlib is good but it would be nice if it could be made clear who may edit and how those edits will be treated, e.g. "edit as you please but I have the final word about what goes in". If you want to be sure that your project is safe, then LPCL is probably not what to use indeed.

[Robin]

If you guys still insist on using this license (and it turns out GPL-incompatible), perhaps you could add a clause to allow people to relicense the work under a GPL-compatible license? If you do that, I'm golden.

That might be an excellent idea (if it's true it's still not GPL-compatible)! Especially since 50-70% of the Open Source world is licensed GPL*. If it already is GPL-compatible, there is no need. Does anyone know a lawyer?


*From Wikipedia somewhere

[Skofo]

Hey, thanks a lot for the clarification, osuf. It's quite interesting that you intend to make the license GPLv3 compatible, I did not know that before.

Thanks again, everyone! ; I admit that that fuss was pretty unnecessary, but I was under the impression that my GPL-compatible dreams were suddenly pried away from my arms.

[bartbes]

What, did I forget to click submit? Anyway, all questions are answered above

[Skofo]

Hey, I decided to ask the Ubuntu forums about this, and while the topic hasn't reached a conclusive answer (at least yet), one guy might have brought up a neat question:

i am not sure about how this bit works.
"1. Derivative works released under more than one license are
subject to the restrictions of each such license."
if i tooks some of your code and put it into my GPL code, then do you get the right to demand that i change the name of a derivative?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6773258

[osuf oboys]

Second, LUBE isn't released under LPCL.

It isn't? My bad, I must've confused it with ENVY.

EDIT: Also, this isn't about me using the license, the solution to that is easy (i.e. using another license), and I wouldn't need to complain. I'm bringing all of this up because of my fetish to make all of my software GPL-compatible all the way down to the kernel, and I cannot do that with CAMERA and other libraries I may use in the future being licensed under the LPCL, so I'm trying to convince people against it. Really, I do not mean any offense to anyone.

Your concerns and points are good ones.

It's a really neat idea, but it has a lot of potential to not work out as nice as it sounds, which I think can be simply and very easily fixed by just using standard free software licenses for free software. I mean come on, all this license does different from public domain is give unnecessary special naming rights, and it's creating all this trouble.

Yes, that's all it does but I'm not sure they're unnecessary.

If someone wants to derive off of CAMERA, can't they just rename it to CAMERAx or UBERCAMERA? Because any free software license allows that.

Yes, you certainly use any LPCL product for anything you want without keeping anything from the LPC License. Likewise, you can name it UBERCAMERA and use it for anything you want.

If you guys still insist on using this license (and it turns out GPL-incompatible), perhaps you could add a clause to allow people to relicense the work under a GPL-compatible license? If you do that, I'm golden.

Assuming LPCL is not compatible with GPL, that probably won't happen without imposing some restrictions on what the new GPL version says or who the trademark belongs to after that. Otherwise, the naming convention is void since anyone can use an GPL-version between two versions of the software to take away the rights of the community. Perhaps if such a transition is authorized by the authors of the first version of the software.

Hey, thanks a lot for the clarification, osuf. It's quite interesting that you intend to make the license GPLv3 compatible, I did not know that before.

I think it is but I will have to check. It certainly seems like a requirement that they should be compatible in one way or another.

[osuf oboys]

Hey, I decided to ask the Ubuntu forums about this, and while the topic hasn't reached a conclusive answer (at least yet), one guy might have brought up a neat question:

i am not sure about how this bit works.
"1. Derivative works released under more than one license are
subject to the restrictions of each such license."
if i tooks some of your code and put it into my GPL code, then do you get the right to demand that i change the name of a derivative?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6773258

If it is released under more than one license, then each license should apply, that's all it says. It says nothing about what license should be used.

But I see, yes, it should be removed as compatibility does what we want that clause to do. I replaced it with
1. Do whatever you want as long as you do not advertise anything as a version of this product.
Note that this clause is actually redundant since it already says that you can release derivative work under a different license and none of the clauses applies to derivative work under a different name.

If it is released as a derivative work under a different name, then the license says that you do not have to release it under LPCL. If it is released under the same name, then it says that you have to include a clause that says that it is a derivative work of the previous version and then the community can force you to change the name of your project. I presume the unclear part is what happens if you use an unaltered copy of an LPCL software in your own program. By the previous version (1.2), the copy would be considered part of your derivative work, not the original software. Hence, if the LPCL license is not visible, you have it licensed under whatever else your work is licensed under. If you kept the license visible, I presume it either means that that subdirectory will either be subject to LPCL or subject to both LPCL and the license of the entire work (and hence you can be forced to not advertise the subdirectory as a new version of the used software). I changed the license somewhat to make it clear that you can use an unaltered copy of a product in your program without labelling the copy a derivative work.
A product may contain an unaltered copy of this
product without labelling it a derivative work under a
different name.

I'll try to rephrase the version so that things should be clearer without clarifications. Any tips? I will make the distinction between copyright and trademark clearer and that there are no restrictions on the former.

[Robin]

I'll try to rephrase the version so that things should be clearer without clarifications. Any tips? I will make the distinction between copyright and trademark clearer and that there are no restrictions on the former.

Could you tell me what will happen when this occurs:
Project Foo under LPCL -> forked as Project FooBar under GPL -> Project FooBar is renamed to Project Foo.
Is this actually prevented by the LPCL or is that outside the scope of the license?