Which LGPL?

[SlySven]

Thank you for relicensing DikuMUD and its off-spring. ❤️

Could you clarify your new licensing terms in doc/license.doc with at least an explicit reference to the document you mean - e.g. I think you are likely to be meaning: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.en.html but without stating that I guess there could be room for ambiguity.

I think it is desirable to flesh that file out a bit as otherwise the line:
* Copyright (C) 1990, 1991 - see 'license.doc' for complete information. *
line in the source file headers is not really pointing at the "complete information".

For anyone else https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html does give a better explanation than I can for others looking at how to make use of this software and the new license.

[nschimme]

I would prefer if we use the LGPL 2.1 license over LGPL 3.0. A lot of older MUDs are closed source and prefer a more liberal license because of this.

[Seifert69]

You can freely choose between LGPL 2.1 and LGPL 3.0 :-) Someday I'll update the doc.

[nschimme]

@Seifert69 FYI, if you want to allow us to freely choose you must select the LGPL 2.1 license for this project.

[Seifert69]

Do you know how per chance? :o) I'm a Git noob still and couldn't figure it out.

[nschimme]

@Seifert69 You generally upload the license file at verbatim into the repository. Right now you have this file:

https://github.com/Seifert69/DikuMUD/blob/master/dm-dist-alfa/doc/license.doc

You would want to upload the below LGPL 2.1 license and reference it in your above document.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.txt

[Seifert69]

Oh. I thought there was a way in Git to select the license. Maybe that's only when you create a new project. Thanks

…

On Thu, Dec 3, 2020, 12:11 Nils Schimmelmann ***@***.***> wrote: @Seifert69 <https://github.com/Seifert69> You generally upload the license file at verbatim into the repository. Right now you have this file: https://github.com/Seifert69/DikuMUD/blob/master/dm-dist-alfa/doc/license.doc You would want to upload the below LGPL 2.1 license and reference it in your above document. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.txt — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AOOOMXQNZ3ISRA7A5TVBKE3SS7WFPANCNFSM4PZPYLCQ> .

[SlySven]

Might I humbly suggest that the wording is changed so:

 As of February 3rd, 2020, the DikuMUD authors Sebastian Hammer, Hans-Henrik
 Starfeldt, Katja Nyboe, and Michael Seifert have all agreed to make their
-DikuMUD work available under the LGPL license. We’ve been unable to get a
-hold of Tom Madsen, but we feel fairly confident that he would likewise agree
-to submit his work under LGPL. This means you can choose yourself if you want
-to use DikuMUD under the LGPL or the original license.  Please note that 
-derivative work isn't automatically under LGPL. It would need to be 
-re-released by its respective authors.
+DikuMUD work available under the GNU Lesser General Public license, either
+version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. We’ve
+been unable to get a hold of Tom Madsen, but we feel fairly confident that
+he would likewise agree to submit his work under LGPL. This means you can
+choose yourself if you want to use DikuMUD under the LGPL or the original
+license.  Please note that derivative work isn't automatically under LGPL.
+It would need to be re-released by its respective authors.

I would offer the advisory that relicensing like this does really need all the licensors to consent so the fact that you have not been able to track down one of your group (or their estate - yeah I do mean that - in the worse case, given that one is working in the area of Copyright one might have to go down that path) is awkward...!