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Re: [Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of nethack-el


From: Loic Dachary
Subject: Re: [Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of nethack-el
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 14:39:46 +0100

Ryan Yeske writes:

 > To what extent are they incompatible?  Do you mean that the two
 > licenses cannot be used within the same code base?  

        Yes. The compatibility between GPL v1 and GPL v2 is implemented
by the "or any later version" of the copyright notices. But Nethack developers
refused this phrase and refused to upgrade to GPL v2. 

 > However, the included patch, enh-331.patch, modifies the Nethack C
 > sources and maintains the license the Nethack developers have chosen
 > (I don't think we have much of a choice here).  Our changes to the

        The choice is yours, always. You could either say they are under
the GNU GPL v2 or the Nethack license. It may be the case that Nethack
developers will refuse your contribution if released under the GNU GPL v2
but they cannot force you to change the license. They can put pressure on
you to change the license of your contribution to Nethack license.

 > Nethack C sources touch several existing files and create two new
 > files (winlisp.c and winlisp.h).
 >  
 > What I assumed was that there isn't a license incompatibility as our
 > GPLv2 elisp code communicates with the NhGPL Nethack binary through
 > stdin/stdout channels.  However, this could be a bad assumption, as

        There is no incompatibility in this case, yes. The incompatibility
only touches the nethack patch, unless you clearly states that it is 
released under the Nethack license. In the current tarbal there is no such
statement, therefore one will think it is released under the same license
as the rest of the files.

 > our elisp code is practically (but not technically) dependent on the
 > existence of a Nethack binary with our patch applied.  In other words,
 > our GPLv2 elisp code is useless without a Nethack binary compiled with
 > the "lisp" window port.  I'm not clear on the law here.

        That is not an issue here. It would be if Nethack was not free
software. But Nethack is Free Software although released under a license
that is incompatible with the GNU GPL v2.

 > OK, so where does that leave us with respect to distributing a package
 > which includes a patch to the Nethack C sources?

        If the patch is under the GNU GPL v2 (as it now is the case)
it is not a problem to host it on Savannah. But I did not want to
trick you into this, hence I ringed the bell. You need to make a
choice. Either to have the patch under the Nethack license and not be
able to host the patch on Savannah. Or have the patch under the GPL v2
license and create a license incompatibility issue on Nethack modified
with your patch.

 > I'd prefer not to go through the process of submitting our project a
 > third time until we know everything is going to be ok wrt licensing.

        :-) I hope this clarifies things. Frankly I never quite understood
why the Nethack team is refusing GPL v2. From the discussions I had with them
it seems more like superstition rather than true reasoning. Oh well.

        Cheers,

-- 
Loic   Dachary         http://www.dachary.org/  address@hidden
12 bd  Magenta         http://www.senga.org/      address@hidden
75010    Paris         T: 33 1 42 45 07 97          address@hidden
        GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt



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