Re: LilyPond, LilyPond snippets and the GPL

[Henning Hraban Ramm]

Am 2019-10-30 um 13:06 schrieb David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
> 
> You are correct that you cannot license the source under any license
> other than the GPL if you are going to distribute it containing GPL
> licensed snippets (the LSR snippets are PD, the Notation Reference
> contents GFDL).  But the PDF reflecting your source code is a derivative
> of the actual content-reflecting parts of the source code.  Of which you
> are the copyright holder.

It’s the same if you publish a book using TeX: While original TeX is PD and 
some other parts have their own licenses, those never apply to the contents of 
your book or the PDF or printed version of it, because the code of TeX (or 
LilyPond) isn’t in there, it was just used to generate the result. (Same if you 
use OS software to generate graphics, videos etc.)

A *program* that’s using open source code *contains* this code (in compiled 
form).

On the other hand if I write a book *about* TeX and show a lot of its code or 
copy examples from the FDL-licensed documentation, my book also falls under 
that license. While the publisher can sell copies, we can’t prohibit users to 
make their own copies, becaus the book is derived work of the publicly 
available documentation.


Greetlings, Hraban
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fiëé visuëlle
Henning Hraban Ramm
https://www.fiee.net