Timeline for Are there license restrictions for Emacs Lisp packages?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 29, 2018 at 17:53 | comment | added | Lassi | The most common interpretation of this linking problem seems to be that a communicating OS process is not a derived work, but a dynamically or statically linked library is. Programs in a programming language are usually not considered derived works, even if there's only one implementation of the language. But then Emacs Lisp is a special purpose programming language for one application only (Emacs). None of these views are unanimous. So unfortunately it is absolutely not clear that an MIT ELisp package is fine or that ELisp packages are not derivative works of Emacs :-/ Hence this question. | |
| Nov 29, 2018 at 17:43 | comment | added | Lassi | The linking issue arises in the first place because linked code is potentially a derivative work in legal terms. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… summarizes this well. | |
| Nov 29, 2018 at 17:16 | comment | added | Stefan | Elisp packages are not derivative works of Emacs, no. But they link to Emacs, hence the need to be GPL-compatible. | |
| Nov 29, 2018 at 15:51 | comment | added | Lassi | To state the main problem even more clearly: "From a legal standpoint, is every Emacs Lisp package actually a derivative work of GNU Emacs?" Or many or most packages, at any rate. Where should we draw the line? | |
| Nov 29, 2018 at 15:46 | comment | added | Lassi | Another thing that's not clear is whether the Emacs Lisp language itself is under GPL. And if you made a clean-room implementation of it without looking at the Lisp interpreter inside GNU Emacs, could you claim that you reverse engineered it and therefore the GPL doesn't apply. | |
| Nov 29, 2018 at 15:45 | comment | added | Lassi | It's true that any MIT code can be combined with any GPL code. However, if the MIT code is a derivative work of the GPL code (instead of being a completely unrelated work) then it's not clear that its authors had permission to release it under MIT in the first place. If this weren't so, then in the extreme case you could take any GPL code you found and re-release it as MIT. This is one of the infamous muddy problems of open source licensing, and AFAIK the answer always comes down to interpretation by the courts or the rights holders. | |
| Nov 29, 2018 at 15:36 | history | answered | Stefan | CC BY-SA 4.0 |