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Re: [EP-tech] Licence information in Bazaar / plugin files

Hi John,

 

Thanks for the interesting question.   This is not legal advice, and I’m not a lawyer, but I do write software, so I’ve had to read up on the topic of software licenses. 

One of the objectives of open source is to keep the licensing as simple as possible, this is why new custom licenses with additional clauses are not open source.

In this case, the license is remaining the same, it is the GNU General Public License, so all is well.

When releasing new versions, you have the responsibility to leave any of the copyright statements intact.

It seems to me that for any additions and changes that you make to the code (i.e., introducing new version/modifications/etc to it), you can add your own name, with your own choice of license.  However, if you choose any license other than GPL for your additions/modifications, then that becomes problematic.

 

Tomasz

 

 

From: eprints-tech-bounces@ecs.soton.ac.uk [mailto:eprints-tech-bounces@ecs.soton.ac.uk] On Behalf Of John Salter
Sent: August-10-17 8:03 AM
To: 'eprints-tech@ecs.soton.ac.uk' <eprints-tech@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Subject: [EP-tech] Licence information in Bazaar / plugin files

 

Hi,

Bit of a non-techie question - but one that is in our domain.

 

I'm making some updates to the UKETD_DC (UK eTheses and Dissertations) export plugin:

https://github.com/eprints/eprints/blob/3.3/perl_lib/EPrints/Plugin/Export/OAI_UKETD_DC.pm

 

The changes will be issued as a Pull Request on the 3.3 branch, and I will also be making them into a Bazaar package.

 

The file already contains some copyright information from the British Library (who were involved with creating the initial export format):

https://github.com/eprints/eprints/blob/3.3/perl_lib/EPrints/Plugin/Export/OAI_UKETD_DC.pm#L9-L29

-in summary:

    Copyright (C) British Library Board, St. Pancras, UK

    GNU General Public License v2 (or later)

 

At the end of the file (https://github.com/eprints/eprints/blob/3.3/perl_lib/EPrints/Plugin/Export/OAI_UKETD_DC.pm#L369-L394)

it also has the 'standard' EPrints statements:

    Copyright 2000-2011 University of Southampton.

    GNU Lesser General Public License - v3 or later.

 

I was going to leave all these statements in as-is, and not add any of my own - but ten I wondered if this was actually a 'correct' thing to do - or whether I should be adding any additional information?

 

Obviously it'll still be GNU Lesser General Public License v3 or later, but what about the two copyright statements? Do they already conflict?

Any thoughts?

 

Cheers,

John