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Relicensing and rebasing LibreOfficeRelicensing and rebasing LibreOfficePosted May 30, 2012 0:44 UTC (Wed) by jamesh (guest, #1159)In reply to: Relicensing and rebasing LibreOffice by Richard_J_Neill Parent article: Relicensing and rebasing LibreOffice
You might be able to do that, but if you got sued the onus would be on you to prove that you could distribute your version of the code under the MPL.
This would probably be more work than taking the released Apache licensed code and re-deriving the LibreOffice code base from that through patches with the appropriate license.
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Relicensing and rebasing LibreOffice Posted May 30, 2012 7:43 UTC (Wed) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"You might be able to do that, but if you got sued the onus would be on you to prove that you could distribute your version of the code under the MPL."
I'm confused... it is to the defendant to prove its innocence now-a-days ?
Relicensing and rebasing LibreOffice Posted May 30, 2012 8:03 UTC (Wed) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]
The lawsuit would be of the form "you do not have a license to distribute the code under those terms". Since LibreOffice is obviously based on existing work, the primary defence would be to show that they do in fact have a license for what they're doing.
In such a case, it would be pretty obvious that LibreOffice was derivative of the LGPL'd OpenOffice.org code from Sun/Oracle. It would be more work to prove that their work is derived from the Apache licensed release.
In contrast, if they had version control history that shows how a new version of LibreOffice was derived from the Apache licensed release, then the defence would be a lot easier.
I don't really know the specifics of US law, but in my country civil cases like this are decided "on the balance of probabilities" rather than "beyond reasonable doubt", so not offering a defence could easily lead to the case being decided against you.
Relicensing and rebasing LibreOffice Posted May 31, 2012 0:40 UTC (Thu) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"The lawsuit would be of the form "you do not have a license to distribute the code under those terms"
1/ the suing party would have to have standing... so essentially Oracle
PS: no party could make such a blanket claim... just like, if you publish a book I cannot just 'claim' that you are not the author, I'd have to point to a least a part of your book for which I can prove that I am the author... and that I did not license that part in a way that allow you to re-use it.
Relicensing and rebasing LibreOffice Posted May 31, 2012 8:42 UTC (Thu) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]
So, Oracle (or whoever else holds copyright) could point to the public version control history of LibreOffice and show that it was clearly derived from the LGPL'd OpenOffice.org code they released. Therefore, they must be relying on the LGPL to distribute modified versions of that code. If the defendant is not complying with the LGPL, then that could be enough cause for the law suit.
The "What colour are your bits?" essay that was linked earlier is an interesting read and might give some perspective for this kind of concern.
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