[LAD] LV2 " isn't well thought out ?" LV2 in the Reaper sequencer

[Paul Davis]

On Thu, 2008-01-24 at 14:39 +0100, Arnold Krille wrote:

> Yes, there is a very valid reason for you not to do so: Adding something to 
> the gpl _and_ still calling it the gpl is not valid. 

Wrong. 

"This software is licensed under the terms of the Foobar License version
1.2.8 except that sections 9 through 10 of that license do not apply".

Note the phrase "This software is licensed". These are followed by a
description of the license terms. Let me provide a more extreme example:

"This software is licensed under the terms of the GPL except that you
also need to use it while standing on leg eating a piece of  blue cheese
and singing La Traviata. In addition, the BSD advertising clause also
applies, and section 1.34 of Microsoft's GumbahPL shall apply to any use
on Windows".

A perfectly valid (if insane) license. 

The LS license *references* the GPL for the terms of its license. You do
not issue software under the GPL, you issue it under the *terms* of the
GPL. LS took those terms and modified/added/deleted some of them. When
we say "Ardour is GPL-licensed software", we mean nothing more than "the
terms of Ardour's license are identical to the GPL". it doesn't, and
cannot mean anything else. Now, if you said "my software is licensed by
the Fumble Software Fundamentalists under the terms of their Good
Private License", the situation is different. But I don't believe any
existing Linux audio software falls into this category.

I agree that the license is not well worded (it causes problems for
Linux distributions, for example, in ways that I think are totally
unintended). That doesn't make it an invalid license. 

--p