[MTarver]

Again Harold, a falsehood. Since you have contributed to two threads with the same misinformation, I'll make this clear, not for you, but for everybody else.

Shen is under BSD and anybody who downloads it can see this. The 1/3 page of comment in the pdf is simply pointing out copyright law, mainly for platform holders (and you're not one having sent no code). Everything was thrashed out in fine detail and agreed on before the change.

For other hackers, none of this will register with Harold who will simply continue to spout as he likes to do and write emails to me, but everybody else can find out for themselves by downloading.

I'm not going to feed your self-importance by entering into public correspondence with you. This is all I'm going to write. If others want to get down with you, they can.

[belorn]

This is no different as if the master license text had a "comments" section which said that the license was only for non-commercial use. This has happened many times before, and the legal consensus for it as been more or less the same: The work is under a inconsistent license.

What happen if a person download Shen from a redistributor who had only included source files and no master license file? Can that person then write changes under GPL without being under threat from copyright violations? What if distribution like debian got a GPL package that depend (i.e. links) on Shen?

A lawyer would ask a simple question: What is the authors intention with the license? If it is "changes can be under any license except GPL", then it do not matter if its the authors interpretation of copyright or an explicit license requirement. If the intention is "no changes which is licensed under GPL", then that is the wishes of the author and the legal requirement a distributor has to follow.

[hga]

Perhaps I should limit myself to pointing out that:

"Everything was thrashed out in fine detail and agreed on before the change."

Is demonstrably false. About a day before the planned release of "BSD licensed" Shen 17, we were presented with this language for the master license:

The Shen license

Shen is under a 3 clause BSD license from 2015.

[ The standard language. ]

This license appears in the file BSD.

This license applies to all derived versions of Shen, including all versions derived from the sources provided whatever the method of compilation and the object code generated. This is the reason for clause 2 in the BSD. Such derived works should carry the above license on those source files generated – or with the files if they are binary. Any original code specifically written by the programmer which not derived from the sources supplied is and should be copyrighted to that programmer. This work may be placed under any license of choice except GPL because of the viral condition (see next paragraph)

There is no legal right to relicense or sublicense BSD code or any derived version to another license (e.g. GPL). The power to place a license on a work belongs to the copyright holder.

A person does not assume copyright over a work by making a small change to it. Only if the change is substantial to be deemed intellectually significant can such a claim be made and then only over the change itself. Hence if changing code, if you wish to retain copyright over your changes and they are intellectually significant, offset these changes under your copyright.

[ And Shen certification stuff. ]

There was no prior discussion that I can remember of adding language to the master license file, let alone "hashing out", and after multiple protests, the added language was retained with the 2nd paragraph appended to the 1st and the certification stuff moved to another file, with the following reframing. The initial two lines were changed to:

The Shen License = 3 Clause BSD

Shen is under a 3 clause BSD license from 2015. This license appears in the file BSD in the sources.

And the transition after the BSD license text was given this title:

Comment on BSD, GPL and Copyright

[MTarver]

> There was no prior discussion that I can remember

Actually, Harold, you are either very stupid or have Alzheimer's or are a liar. In fact there was a very long discussion, initiated by me, about GPL and BSD to which you contributed a long irrelevant rambling reminiscence about Stallman. In it I discussed this very point and there was no dispute from you - nor from anyone else as to the legal point I was making.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qilang/mVSJIyp-OhM

Again there was another long thread, in which I explained about copyright and the course we were to follow

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qilang/hWCTdM-0E0c

In fact there were two weeks of open discussion in which I went into detail reiterating the same points several times and leaving the space open for debate precisely so we could have a common understanding. And we all, that is, everybody who actually is making a code contribution, came to an agreement about the law. And strangely we did not miss your sunny personality one bit.

And after that Shen went to BSD and these copyright points were put into a brief paragraph to remind the people involved what copyright law means and we discussed how to present this to be clear. After we went to BSD. And you were and are mainly irrelevant to that process.

And really these paragraphs are not written for you, because I regard you as pointless. It is written for those on the outside. Shen is BSD.

[hga]

Please quote me in full thoughts. What I said was:

> There was no prior discussion that I can remember of adding language to the master license file, let alone "hashing out"

Hashing out of that added language, like, oh, this: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qilang/qGHfX3Iimqk/PBQerwjM2.... You are welcome to point out a specific message broaching this concept prior to this one two days ago https://groups.google.com/d/msg/qilang/WLwJmlxtXSU/rlG9j0SOn... which starts out saying:

"We had a long discussion about copyright and licensing and I've brought it together under a document which will be incorporated into the sources. You can find it here"

Which then pointed to the master licence file I quoted above for the first draft.

This is all I'm going to write. (From the message from you before this one I'm replying to.)

And here we have another example of your making a promise you were unable to keep.