Quote:
Originally Posted by filler56789
Well... yesterday I e-mailed Patrakov and told him I had just found the ffdcaenc project, and I asked him,
"how about making those new features available to the Linux folks?"
Then he told me it wouldn't be possible, because according to him at least, Lord_Mulder's code uses both the GPL and the LGPL, and to him this is a reason "strong enough" to NOT import Lord_Mulder's modifications into his Linux-code  And as ffdcaenc is a fork of Mulder's work, then Patrakov should refuse its improvements as well :–/ |
I don't know how that idea came up
First of all, mixing LGPL'd code with GPL'd code is perfectly fine and allowed. The combined work would have to be released under GPL, of course.
Secondly, my branch of "dcaenc" does
not contain anything, except for the original code by Patrakov plus the modifications/code that I wrote myself.
Last but not least, all modifications/code I added to dcaenc are released under the same license as the original project. That is: LGPL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by filler56789
Besides: the README.TXT from the ffdcaenc package included a "usage restriction" that is clearly incompatible with the GPL and the LGPL  And instead of simply fixing the absurd README.TXT, the author of ffdcaenc preferred to remove the entire project from his GitHub directory  |
If somebody has the copyright on a piece of code, he can decide to release that code under whatever license he wishes. So, if that person decides to release his/her code under the GPL or LGPL
but with certain additional restrictions, that is perfectly fine. Of course that code is then released under a modified GPL rather than the original GPL. But again, the original copyright holder is perfectly allowed to decide that way. The copyright holder can even decide to release his code under
multiple incompatible licenses. A lot of popular projects are released under the GPL or LGPL and,
at the same time, under some commercial/proprietary license. x264 is one example. Qt is another one.
Having said that, if somebody takes an
existing code that was released under the original (L)GPL by the original authors, then the derivative work must be released under the original (L)GPL again - unless all copyright holders, i.e. all original authors, agree on the license change. Consequently, if somebody creates a derivative work based on code that had been released under the original (L)GPL'd, but then that person releases his/her derivative work under some license
more restrictive than the (L)GPL,
without explicit permission by the original authors, then these additional restrictions simply are
ineffective. Furthermore, as soon as a specific version of a software has been released under the (L)GPL once, everybody can continue to use
that version under the (L)GPL as long he or she wants - even if the original author decides to
not release future versions of the software under the (L)GPL anymore.