On 06/02/11 11:13, Damjan Jovanovic wrote:

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 5:48 PM, Shachar Shemesh <shachar@shemesh.biz> wrote:

On 05/02/11 00:24, James McKenzie wrote:

Actually, the latest patch is what I don't want reused. And no, you don't put it in the LGPL until it is committed, which I don't expect AJ to do anyway.

However, I'm moving in a different direction since my Mac needs more repairs than I'm willing to spend money on.

Besides, I've been a big enough pain that my existence here is unwarranted and unneeded.

As anyone who attended the last WineConf probably already knows, you have my complete sympathies in that regard. I also doubt very much anyone would use your uncommitted patches against your will, so in that respect, you probably have nothing to worry about.

That said, I believe your claim to the right to demand no use is wrong. It is my understanding that by submitting your patches to wine-patches, you have placed them under the LGPL, which is a non-revocable license. Again, in all likely hood, this is a purely hypothetical question.

If the LGPL is non-revocable, is code you've placed under it still re-licensable, by you, under another license, as long as you don't revoke the LGPL in the process?

ie. could I submit a piece of code to Wine and to another project?

First, IANAL.

You do not give up your copyright when you license code under the LGPL (or any other open source license). You merely provide a license (which is irrevocable). As such, the answer is "yes". You can license code for which you own the complete copyrights under as many licenses of any type you wish to as many recipients as you wish, even if the licenses conflict.

That said, if the copyright is only for derivative work, then you also need a license for the original work. The only license you have for the original work in the case of Wine is the LGPL, and THAT LICENSE is conditioned upon the fact that you license your own code under the LGPL only. As such, you cannot license changes to wine under another license, despite the fact you have the copyright for it, as that would leave you without the license to create your derivative work in the first place.

So the real question is how independent your code is that you wish to submit. As long as you do not copy code from wine, you can submit the same change to as many open source projects as you like (even if their licenses are conflicting), and even use it for a proprietary project. If, however, the code requires Wine code in order to make sense, then you are bound by the LGPL and need to only use the code in a compliant way.

Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com