Adriaan van Os wrote:
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
or make the Pascal interface "uncopyrighted"(*) as you suggested;
Read the thread. I said "except as needed to respect the original works".
You said:
: With all respect for the GPL and the LGPL, I would : argue strongly that Pascal interface files be left uncopyrighted.
OK, I will try to clarify the idea behind what I said (or at least tried to say). When I wrote the message, I were rather irritated finding software that can not be used because the wrong license is attached. In retrospect, I think this is caused by MySQL AB, changing the license from version 3 to version 4.
There is a piece of software that we want to use with Pascal. Most of the time, C-headers are supplied with the software. The C-headers are the "original work". Now, someone translates the C-headers into Pascal. The Pascal interface units are a "derived work". Now, the Pascal interface units have two copyright owners, the author of the original work and the author of the translation - both have contributed to the new work.
My approach to this is -- with the predominance of C, we should be glad that somewhere we can find Pascal interfaces. So, we only make things unnecessary difficult if the C-to-Pascal translator attaches extra restrictions, extra licensing terms or even the wrong license. So, the idea is to just add a sentence to the Pascal units that (a) the Pascal-translation-part of it as-such doesn't add anything to the licensing terms and as-such is "uncopyrighted" and (b) the copyrights of the original work (the C-headers) have to be respected --
I agree in principle, but I suppose the wording "uncopyrighted" is questionable (in particular in continental Europe) and could, in the worst case, mean that the derived work is not licensed at all and cannot be used. Therefore I suggest to put the derived work explicitly under the same license as the original work (provided the license allows that which all of the common free software licenses do). That's what Eike did with MySQL 3.23.x.
but they will vary or may even change in time.
In this case, if the derived version is updated to the new version, the authors of the derived work can (and should) re-check the license. I suppose Eike forgot to do this (probably unintentionally) when updating to MySQL 4.x.
This is what Peter, Gale and I do with the Mac OS X Pascal Interfaces -- I am open to suggestions as to what would be the best way to say this in terms of copyright law.
Since Peter and Gala are from Australia and USA, they can put their works in the public domain, but you cannot. (AFAIK.) You can release it without any extra conditions (such as: "Copyright ... The author gives unlimited permission to copy and/or distribute [it], with or without modifications, as long as this notice is preserved."), or use the license of the original work.
IANAL. Frank