1 Topic by Jaazu

  • Jaazu
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Topic: htmLawed conversion to ColdFusion

Greetings,

I'm planning to migrate your code over to our ColdFusion platform and was curious as to what, if any, permissions I'd require from you to do so.  Once complete we'd be using the htmLawed.cfm code in our company application, but I'd also like to share the work with the ColdFusion community as a whole.  Is this OK?

2 Reply by patnaik

  • patnaik
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Re: htmLawed conversion to ColdFusion

Yes, it should be okay.

It seems you plan to translate htmLawed into a different computer language. While you will not modify htmLawed within its PHP language, porting of htmLawed from PHP to ColdFusion will probably* be considered a modification of htmLawed (i.e., generating a derived work), which means that htmLawed's licensing terms will have to be kept in mind.

Anyone can use htmLawed or use code that is derived from htmLawed without having to think of license terms if the use is private. Use by multiple people within an organization such as a company is considered private if someone in the organization distributes htmLawed or its modification to others in the organization.

On the other hand, licensing terms become significant if the use is not private, such as when htmLawed or its modification is made available to others, either by itself or as part of another software, and either free or for a cost.

htmLawed is dual-licensed under LGPL version 3, and GPL version 2 or later. The person who is modifying htmLawed or incorporating htmLawed or its modification in another software, can choose to use the original htmLawed code under either the LGPL3 or the GPL2+ license. Obviously, htmLawed's original copyright cannot be changed and the license for htmLawed as provided by the original copyright holder will stay.

Under GPL2+, not only would htmLawed or its modification have to stay under a GPL2+-compatible^ license, but if htmLawed or its modification is a part of another software, then that software itself will have to use a GPL2+-compatible license.

Under LGPL3, however, htmLawed or its modification can be put under an LGPL3-compatible license, and if htmLawed or its modification is a part of another software, then that software is not required to have an LGPL3-compatible license.

* See http://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/86754/is-it-possible-to-rewrite-every-line-of-an-open-source-project-in-a-slightly-dif

^ See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_compatibility