You are in copyright violation according to Section 3 LGPL

[dguhl]

This issue informs you that you are in copyright violation against exist-db according to Section 3 LGPL, which prohibits relicensing.

You are ordered by law to re-establish the original LGPL license. Closing or deleting this issue without compliance will trigger a copyright lawsuit against Evolved Binary Ltd. according to Title 17 of the United States Code as ratified by the United Kingdom rec. 64 Stat. A412, 58 Stat. 1129, 41 Stat. 1790 and 38 Stat. 2044. Your repository may be rescinded and your organization's account on GitHub suspended according to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

You may license your own contributions since and after the duplication of the original source code for your repository. The original license must remain intact for as long as original software code remains in the project.

[adamretter]

Hi @dguhl that you for opening this issue and for taking an interest in what is a very dry and complex topic.

This issue informs you that you are in copyright violation against exist-db according to Section 3 LGPL, which prohibits relicensing.

The blog article that you linked to here: https://exist-db.org/exist/apps/wiki/blogs/eXist/license-statement-2025-05 is unfortunately both misleading and incorrect in several places.

We have worked very hard with Elemental to ensure that we have followed the terms of all applicable licenses, Copyright, and respected the Intellectual Property of others. If you believe that we are in violation of any of the Open Source licenses that comprise the eXist-db code base, then please provide us with the exact details of any such violations and we will be happy to investigate each of those and resolve them if we discover an issue.

You are ordered by law to re-establish the original LGPL license

I am not sure I understand your terminology. Unless I am mistaken, legally, I believe that, we could only be 'ordered' to do this by the outcome of an official court ruling.

Closing or deleting this issue without compliance will trigger a copyright lawsuit against Evolved Binary Ltd

As I understand it, GitHub issues are not directly linked to the legal system of the UK or any other country.
Are you saying that you personally will launch a Copyright Lawsuit against Evolved Binary Ltd if we close or delete this GitHub issue? I must say that sounds rather threatening.

I would have thought that if you wish to take legal action against Evolved Binary, then a GitHub issue is not an appropriate means to do so, and that closing said issue would have no direct bearing on any legal case.
Rather, I would encourage you to contact us directly so that we can have our legal experts discuss this with yours. You can find our contact details here - https://evolvedbinary.com/contact.html

Your repository may be rescinded and your organization's account on GitHub suspended according to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

May I ask, do you work at GitHub? Or do you have the authority legally and/or technically to do that? This again seems like a rather threatening statement.

You may license your own contributions since and after the duplication of the original source code for your repository.

Yes, agreed. That is exactly what we have done.
We are also free to re-license our own Intellectual Property, which we have additionally done.

The original license must remain intact for as long as original software code remains in the project.

Yes, agreed. We have also done that.

I hope this clarifies the situation. Once we complete our investigation of this issue, we will publish publicly a full written statement setting out the facts. We hope that will resolve any confusion and quash the misinformation that has been published both in the blog article you mentioned (above) and by those same authors on their Social Media platforms.

[dguhl]

Hello @adamretter,

We have worked very hard with Elemental to ensure that we have followed the terms of all applicable licenses, Copyright, and respected the Intellectual Property of others. If you believe that we are in violation of any of the Open Source licenses that comprise the eXist-db code base, then please provide us with the exact details of any such violations and we will be happy to investigate each of those and resolve them if we discover an issue.

The violation is that you relicensed the originally distributed code (the repository) under your license by removing all original license and copyright notes, which is prohibited by the license you unlawfully removed (Section 3 LGPL 2.1), which occured because, other than your commit message states, you did not keep the license to the original code either in the license file or the code files. You may only mark your own contributions under your own license, but the license and copyright declaration of the original source code would need to remain intact.

The blog article that you linked to here: https://exist-db.org/exist/apps/wiki/blogs/eXist/license-statement-2025-05 is unfortunately both misleading and incorrect in several places.

It isn't. Other than your intentions may have been, you in fact removed the LGPL from your project and replaced it with your own license. This is a violation of the LGPL which in Section 3 does not allow for any replacement of the license other than the GPL. If you wish to license your own additions to the source under a different license, you would have to introduce your license to your contributions in a double-licensing manner according to Section 4.

You are ordered by law to re-establish the original LGPL license

I am not sure I understand your terminology. Unless I am mistaken, legally, I believe that, we could only be 'ordered' to do this by the outcome of an official court ruling.

Court rulings only apply to judicature and legal interpretation procured in litigation. Unless you wish to dispute the validity of the license (which itself already would revoke your right to use the source code licensed under it), it is in fact the law and the license which orders you to heal the violation under the assumption of error before litigation would be seeked. Even if it is ultimatively the exist-db project which orders you to rectify the situation and restorate the original license notice, they would rightfully do so.

Closing or deleting this issue without compliance will trigger a copyright lawsuit against Evolved Binary Ltd

As I understand it, GitHub issues are not directly linked to the legal system of the UK or any other country. Are you saying that you personally will launch a Copyright Lawsuit against Evolved Binary Ltd if we close or delete this GitHub issue? I must say that sounds rather threatening.

Closing or deleting the issure without proper restoration of license can be interpreted as discarding the notice in contempt. Seeking litigation would be the logical conclusion. Even if I hardly involve myself in lawsuits regarding the works of others, I often find myself funding lawsuits to defend the copyright of open source developers against their violators. However, each of the contributors to the original source code which license you violated is eligible for a lawsuit against you resp. Evolved Binary Ltd. for copyright violation, as much as the Free Software Foundation as the copyright holder of works licensed under the GNU LGPL.

I would have thought that if you wish to take legal action against Evolved Binary, then a GitHub issue is not an appropriate means to do so, and that closing said issue would have no direct bearing on any legal case. Rather, I would encourage you to contact us directly so that we can have our legal experts discuss this with yours. You can find our contact details here - https://evolvedbinary.com/contact.html

I am sure legal advisors of the project will take on that quite soon. The GitHub issue here serves the purpose of notifying you that you are in violation of the license under which the source code has been disclosed and given to you, and by extent the copyright of the Free Software Foundation and the contributors.

Not removing the notice of referral to the GNU LGP License or the License itself in the file LICENSE is Section 1 of the GNU LGPL 2.1 as the binding condition to be permitted for redistribution.

You may license your own contributions since and after the duplication of the original source code for your repository.

Yes, agreed. That is exactly what we have done. We are also free to re-license our own Intellectual Property, which we have additionally done.

No you didn't do that. You replaced the original license agreement with one of your own, without placing proper licensing notices to the source code in the file or in every source file which you did not author completely on your own, and that violates the license under which the source code was given to you in the first place.

The original license must remain intact for as long as original software code remains in the project.

Yes, agreed. We have also done that.

No, you didn't. You removed every notice of the GNU LGPL and replaced it completely with your own license and this issue strongly moves you remedy that otherwise very costly error before litigation is seeked.

[adamretter]

Hi @dguhl thank you for taking the time to reply. Let me first reiterate that we are committed to adhering to all applicable laws and licenses, and that we will resolve any issues where they are identified and confirmed.

I still think there may be some misunderstanding in this issue of exactly what we have done. I will try to elaborate. I think if we can both be very specific about any suggested violations under consideration, then we can hopefully quickly ascertain where any potential issues may or may not exist.

The violation is that you relicensed the originally distributed code (the repository) under your license by removing all original license and copyright notes

I think this is likely the main point of contention in your issue. We do not yet at this time agree with your assessment here, but we remain open to further hearing and considering your arguments.

We have both, in the past and now, created code on our systems here, and that code is our Intellectual Property. In the past we have licensed some of our Intellectual Property for use in the eXist-db project. A copy of that code remains in the eXist-db GitHub repository. Solely for that purpose we granted a license to use it to the eXist-db project under the terms of one of the following licenses:

1. LGPL v2.1 or newer license.
2. LGPL v2.1 Only license.
3. BSD 3-clause license.

See: https://github.com/eXist-db/exist/blob/eXist-6.3.0/exist-core/pom.xml#L647

The changes (commit 0de57cf) that you referenced only update files that we believe are our original Intellectual Property and that we had previously licensed for use in eXist-db. Note that it changes only a few of the many many files that also comprise eXist-db.

We are now licensing our Intellectual Property for use in Elemental under a different License. For Elemental 6.4.0 and 7.0.0 we licensed our Intellectual Property under LGPL v2.1 only. For the upcoming Elemental 8.0.0 release, we will license our Intellectual Property under BSL 1.1.

which is prohibited by the license you unlawfully removed (Section 3 LGPL 2.1), which occured because, other than your commit message states you did not keep the license to the original code either in the license file or the code files. You may only mark your own contributions under your own license, but the license and copyright declaration of the original source code would need to remain intact.

As this code is our Intellectual Property, as I understand it, we are free to relicense it to anyone else under any terms we agree. Our Original Source code files in our internal repository, before we contributed a copy and licensed it for use in the eXist-db project, simply have the copyright declaration 'Copyright Evolved Binary Ltd 2014, and before that 'Copyright Adam Retter 1999

It isn't. Other than your intentions may have been, you in fact removed the LGPL from your project and replaced it with your own license. This is a violation of the LGPL which in Section 3 does not allow for any replacement of the license other than the GPL. If you wish to license your own additions to the source under a different license, you would have to introduce your license to your contributions in a double-licensing manner according to Section 4.

I think that you might be mistaken. We have not removed the LGPL from files (nor modified their license or copyright header) in Elemental where the Intellectual Property is not ours and it is either:

1. Belonging to a 3rd-party (e.g. others that have contributed to eXist-db).
   There are many many files in Elemental that show this, i.e. still under the 'LGPL v2.1 or later' license. Just one of many examples of this can be seen here: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/blob/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/storage/txn/Txn.java
   We believe that this is in compliance with Section 1 of the LGPL 2.1 license.

2. A combination of our Intellectual Property and that of a 3rd-party.
   In these instances we have maintained the original license header and copyright for that code, and we have also added our license header and copyright for our new contributions. Again, there are many examples of this in the code base, you can see one such example here: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/blob/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/jetty/JettyStart.java
   We believe that this is in compliance with Sections 4, 6, and 7 of the LGPL 2.1 license.

We believe that we have only licensed our own Intellectual Property under a license of our choosing. This involved updating ONLY those files where the Intellectual Property is entirely ours. You can also see one such example of this here: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/commits/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/util/URIResolverHierarchy.java
That being the case, Section 3 of the LGPL 2.1 does not apply here as we believe we have only modified our Intellectual Property, and we are therefore free to license it as we wish.

There have been many files involved in this review process. If you believe that there are some files which we may have accidentally identified as our Intellectual Property and then mistakenly changed the license on, please provide us specific details of which files those are, and we will investigate.

if it is ultimatively the exist-db project which orders you to rectify the situation and restorate the original license notice

If I am not mistaken, the 'exist-db project' is not a legally recognised entity, i.e. neither a person, foundation, nor a commercially registered group, therefore would it not instead need to be each individual contributor that would need to do this?

Closing or deleting the issure without proper restoration of license can be interpreted as discarding the notice in contempt.

I agree that that is one possible interpretation. However, I think it is clear that we are engaging in this discussion in good faith and that we have made it clear that we wish to resolve this. I still personally feel that a GitHub issue is probably not the appropriate forum for this, but here you are.

However, each of the contributors to the original source code which license you violated is eligible for a lawsuit against you resp. Evolved Binary Ltd. for copyright violation, as much as the Free Software Foundation as the copyright holder of works licensed under the GNU LGPL.

I think it is still has to be determined whether there has been a copyright violation. I am hopeful that my explanation above and the links I have provided will help clarify the matter. If there has been such a violation, then we will work promptly to resolve it.

I am sure legal advisors of the project will take on that quite soon.

May I ask if you are in contact with them, and if you represent them in some form as their legal counsel?

The GitHub issue here serves the purpose of notifying you that you are in violation of the license under which the source code has been disclosed and given to you, and by extent the copyright of the Free Software Foundation and the contributors.

May I ask whom is notifying us of this?

Not removing the notice of referral to the GNU LGP License or the License itself in the file LICENSE is Section 1 of the GNU LGPL 2.1 as the binding condition to be permitted for redistribution.

I cannot find anything in the LGPL 2.1 license (see: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html) that specifically mentions a LICENSE file at all. Can you tell me where we might find that?

From what I can understand we are in compliance of Section 1 of the LGPL 2.1. From Section 1:

1. provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty

We do that in every file that is LGPL 2.1 licensed, e.g.: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/blob/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/storage/txn/Txn.java

2. keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty.

As above we do this in every file that is LGPL 2.1 licensed.

3. and distribute a copy of this License along with the Library

We do that. You can see that in all of our distributions. For example, download and unzip this distribution - https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/releases/download/elemental-7.0.0/elemental-7.0.0-win.zip and you find the license in the root of the Zip file.

No you didn't do that. You replaced the original license agreement with one of your own, without placing proper licensing notices to the source code in the file or in every source file which you did not author completely on your own, and that violates the license under which the source code was given to you in the first place.

I think there might be a misunderstanding here. When you say "the source code was given to you. This source code was not given to us. We created the source code. Assuming that we have not mistakenly identified any Intellectual Property as our own where it is not, then this is our code which we created; which we previously contributed a copy to the eXist-db project and licensed that copy under the LGPL 2.1 license for the purpose of using it in the eXist-db project.

You removed every notice of the GNU LGPL and replaced it completely with your own license

No, we did not do that. As linked above ( https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/blob/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/storage/txn/Txn.java and

elemental/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/jetty/JettyStart.java

Line 35 in 0de57cf

* This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or

), you can see that the LGPL license is still alive and well in our project on those files that are subject to that license.

[dguhl]

Hi @dguhl thank you for taking the time to reply. Let me first reiterate that we are committed to adhering to all applicable laws and licenses, and that we will resolve any issues where they are identified and confirmed.

I'm glad to hear it. I am committed to explain the rights of your fellow developers to you in accordance to the license their work has been disclosed to you and on behalf of their copyright. As you introduced, the topic of licensing and copyright is very dry and complex, especially due to the vast amount of litigation, legislation and international agreements on the legal issue and treatment of intellectual property which are to be respected in your case as you and the company behind your project is based in the United Kingdom, while the Free Software Foundation as one of the copyright holders is based in Boston, Michigan (United States).

We have both, in the past and now, created code on our systems here, and that code is our Intellectual Property. In the past we have licensed some of our Intellectual Property for use in the eXist-db project. A copy of that code remains in the eXist-db GitHub repository. Solely for that purpose we granted a license to use it to the eXist-db project under the terms of one of the following licenses:

1. LGPL v2.1 or newer license.
2. LGPL v2.1 Only license.
3. BSD 3-clause license.

See: https://github.com/eXist-db/exist/blob/eXist-6.3.0/exist-core/pom.xml#L647

It is undisputed that you may distribute your Intellectual Property under the terms and conditions of your choice. However, it is also undisputed that the terms and conditions you chose for distributing your Intellectual Property in the first place are irrevokable under the LGPL, in the shape and form you distributed it (as so the license states). That means you may chose your terms differently for future distribution of your Intellectual Property, but you can't retro-actively change the terms you chose for the Intellectual Property you already distributed under these terms.

For the remainder of this argument I refer only to the LGPL, in the version 2.1, and I might call it "the license", even though the project might contain code under various different licenses, the argument is about the parts licensed under LGPL v2.1.

Not being able to reconsider the original distribution in hindsight with the effect of retro-actively closing it to the recipients, also means that you can't change the terms and conditions of your original distribution, i.e. the license. You might have contributed under the chosen licenses with ulterior (...to everyone who drew a copy of the source code...) intent. However, as so declared in Section 9 of LGPL 2.1, you waived your deliberation by contributing. In simple terms, you waived any superior condition on which you could base a rollback of licensing your own contributions.

Even if there was, your deliberation could not apply to contributions to any and all parts of the source code NOT contributed by you, which should seem obvious, however even not with written consent for the same reasons as stated above. Even if you were the sole contributor for a single file, is the condition to contribute under the LGPL that you grant and/or waive certain rights on your contribution to everyone who wishes to obtain the works you contributed under the license you agreed to and chose to contribute under, as the individual contributors to the source and their reasoning or conditions are, under the terms of the LGPL at least, remaining oblivious to the user as a default case in distribution. This is even true for BSD licenses.

The changes (commit 0de57cf) that you referenced only update files that we believe are our original Intellectual Property and that we had previously licensed for use in eXist-db. Note that it changes only a few of the many many files that also comprise eXist-db.

For the reasons stated above, you are not allowed to reclaim the rights you waived and/or granted through contributing under the LGPL. For any works which remains unchanged other than the licensing terms, it would mean that there would be multiple claims by different projects to the copyright and intellectual property in the same file, which is only sustainable for as long as these claims do not conflict, which they would under your new license.

We are now licensing our Intellectual Property for use in Elemental under a different License. For Elemental 6.4.0 and 7.0.0 we licensed our Intellectual Property under LGPL v2.1 only. For the upcoming Elemental 8.0.0 release, we will license our Intellectual Property under BSL 1.1.

You may do so for only the contributions and parts you added to the software in 8.0.0. Everything you contributed under 6.4.0 and 7.0.0 must remain LGPL 2.1, especially when the source originated in or was contributed to the exist-db project first-hand.

As this code is our Intellectual Property, as I understand it, we are free to relicense it to anyone else under any terms we agree.

No, not when you chose to distribute a version of your Intellectual Property under LGPL in the first place, as clearly stated in Section 3.

Our Original Source code files in our internal repository, before we contributed a copy and licensed it for use in the eXist-db project, simply have the copyright declaration 'Copyright Evolved Binary Ltd 2014, and before that 'Copyright Adam Retter 1999

Licensing the original source code under LGPL for contribution also means that your original source code files in the version you contributed it are copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, as stated in the Preamble of the license.

I think that you might be mistaken. We have not removed the LGPL from files (nor modified their license or copyright header) in Elemental where the Intellectual Property is not ours

...which, even if I believe that was your intention, is not true, as explained above.

There are many many files in Elemental that show this, i.e. still under the 'LGPL v2.1 or later' license. Just one of many examples of this can be seen here: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/blob/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/storage/txn/Txn.java

The example you presented also states clearly: "You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this library; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA". The copy of the GNU GPL in question is the one you removed out of the LICENSE file.

We believe that this is in compliance with Section 1 of the LGPL 2.1 license.

It is not. Section 1 of the license demands to "keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any
warranty; and distribute a copy of this License along with the Library distribute a copy of this License along with the Library". As you admitted above, you removed the notice from certain files you believe you have a claim on, and as I have proven you also removed the copy of the license demanded by Section 1.

2. A combination of our Intellectual Property and that of a 3rd-party.
   In these instances we have maintained the original license header and copyright for that code, and we have also added our license header and copyright for our new contributions. Again, there are many examples of this in the code base, you can see one such example here: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/blob/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/jetty/JettyStart.java
   We believe that this is in compliance with Sections 4, 6, and 7 of the LGPL 2.1 license.

This is the only way to go about for the whole project, in fact, because any code which you contributed to exist-db first before merging and/or forking it back to your project must be considered 3rd-party for the reasons stated above. As that can be a very cumbersome or even exhaustive process, this requirement is the reason why most projects would chose to only link the LGPL-licensed software as a library and set property to the software which links the library.

We believe that we have only licensed our own Intellectual Property under a license of our choosing. This involved updating ONLY those files where the Intellectual Property is entirely ours. You can also see one such example of this here: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/commits/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/util/URIResolverHierarchy.java That being the case, Section 3 of the LGPL 2.1 does not apply here as we believe we have only modified our Intellectual Property, and we are therefore free to license it as we wish.

Not retroactively. Once you contributed that code to the project under the license terms of the project, which was the LGPL 2.1, you cannot relicense your contribution after forking back the source to your repository. The original source code does not contain any notice indicating your contribution was a donation to the project under terms, and your fork would even in the event of you making changes to source, require at least two licenses.

You can, however, double-license alongside the LGPL, as long as your license would not conflict with the LGPL. For example, some GPL projects offer a different license to their own Intellectual Property to everyone who wishes not to disclose changes made on the software - an arrangement not required under LGPL. Under LGPL, you can make additions to the source without being forced to disclose them; however, the original source code of the project, withheld the additions, must be disclosed somehow to the user. The additions withheld, however, can be licensed differently.

There have been many files involved in this review process. If you believe that there are some files which we may have accidentally identified as our Intellectual Property and then mistakenly changed the license on, please provide us specific details of which files those are, and we will investigate.

As stated above, you contributed these files originally to the exist-db project under different license terms, and therefore you cannot change the license of these afterwards.

if it is ultimatively the exist-db project which orders you to rectify the situation and restorate the original license notice

If I am not mistaken, the 'exist-db project' is not a legally recognised entity, i.e. neither a person, foundation, nor a commercially registered group, therefore would it not instead need to be each individual contributor that would need to do this?

No, as the Free Software Foundation is one of the copyright holders of the project (as stated in the LGPL under which every of the exist-db authors contributed), the Foundation can be the sole enforcer of its rights to the project. However, the legally recognized entity behind the exist-db project, maintaining the project and the rights of its contributors, the exist-db authors, is the eXist Solutions GmbH in Lenzkirch, Germany.

I agree that that is one possible interpretation. However, I think it is clear that we are engaging in this discussion in good faith and that we have made it clear that we wish to resolve this. I still personally feel that a GitHub issue is probably not the appropriate forum for this, but here you are.

The copyright violation of your project is an issue, it happened on GitHub, so it can be a GitHub issue. I don't see any problem in arguing with transparency to the open source community.

I think it is still has to be determined whether there has been a copyright violation. I am hopeful that my explanation above and the links I have provided will help clarify the matter. If there has been such a violation, then we will work promptly to resolve it.

As explained above, removing the copy of the license and license notices in the files is a copyright violation to the Free Software Foundation, as maintaining the copy and license notices are demanded by Section 1 of the LGPL under which every author contributed to the exist-db project you forked.

I am sure legal advisors of the project will take on that quite soon.

May I ask if you are in contact with them, and if you represent them in some form as their legal counsel?

You may, but I am in no obligation to disclose that information to you at this time. However, the argument in this GitHub issue might help legal counsels of the project, whoever that is, to build the case if the situation cannot be rectified outside the court.

Not removing the notice of referral to the GNU LGP License or the License itself in the file LICENSE is Section 1 of the GNU LGPL 2.1 as the binding condition to be permitted for redistribution.

I cannot find anything in the LGPL 2.1 license (see: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/lgpl-2.1.html) that specifically mentions a LICENSE file at all. Can you tell me where we might find that?

LICENSE is merely the name of the file in which the copy of the license has to be distributed as stated in Section 1 of the GNU LGPL. The license demands not only a copy of the license distributed alongside the source code, it also demands "a prominent place", which is a place where the license text can be found easily, like in plain sight. A text file with the name LICENSE clearly checks these conditions.

After all, if a file named LICENSE would be irrelevant to the case, why would you have gone through the trouble to change its contents...

From what I can understand we are in compliance of Section 1 of the LGPL 2.1. From Section 1:

1. provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty

We do that in every file that is LGPL 2.1 licensed, e.g.: https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/blob/0de57cf52fd7888fa63b97fe87b3a4e37782b4ab/exist-core/src/main/java/org/exist/storage/txn/Txn.java
2. keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty.

As above we do this in every file that is LGPL 2.1 licensed.

Except for the files you relicensed in violation of Section 3, as explained and reasoned above.

3. and distribute a copy of this License along with the Library

We do that. You can see that in all of our distributions. For example, download and unzip this distribution - https://github.com/evolvedbinary/elemental/releases/download/elemental-7.0.0/elemental-7.0.0-win.zip and you find the license in the root of the Zip file.

But you don't do that in this source code, which is also the Library referred to in the LGPL, which itself is noticed in source files of your project. Also, as you stated earlier, you change the content of the LICENSE file in future versions, like 8.0.0, which would omit the required copy even though it still contains LGPL-licensed code.

In summary, I must say that I find your arguments in this issue dishonest, as you inappropriately pick when to apply the LGPL to your suiting (when you wrongfully feel to be in accordance with it, even though you violated it) and when not (when you present ulterior intent as condition for your contribution and ultimatively claim the LGPL would not apply to your IP), and as our conversation about the contents of the LICENSE file shows, you know very well what you did wrong.

[yamahito]

@dguhl as an interested third party in both eXist and elemental, may I ask in what capacity you are acting? You seem to imply that this issue constitutes an official notice, are you acting as an agent or representative of eXist Solutions, or simply as a member of the open source community?

Thanks in advance.

[dguhl]

@yamahito None of the information you requested matters and/or helps to resolve the violation of the license and copyright of the exist-db authors and I am in no obligation to tell you more than I already did.

[yamahito]

@dguhl Agreed, but:

I don't see any problem in arguing with transparency to the open source community.

[dguhl]

@dguhl Agreed, but:

I don't see any problem in arguing with transparency to the open source community.

That's in regards to the question whether a GitHub issue would be "the right forum" to discuss the matter, as I already said. If the GNU LGPL license under which code was contributed would have been adapted as also an honorary code by those who seek to remove it now, the question who's noticing whom on a violation should really not matter. To this point, the discussion so far has proven that the removal of the required licensing notices and copies by this project did not happen in error, but in ill will of private reconsideration.

I hope my effort in explaining the rights of open source developers to a project which hopes to commercialize open source efforts by volunteers would be seen as helpful assistance to avoid a costly lawsuit by interested parties, which likely would be filed by people or organizations including eXist Solutions or the Free Software Foundation after some already consulted experts on the field.

This issue and discussion should be seen as a pre-litigation attempt to resolve the matter, one either eXist Solutions or FSF or the contributors to the project can spare if this discussion would not lead to the desired outcome, which is the restoration of the LGPL in this project to the parts which were originally licensed under it.

[yamahito]

To this point, the discussion so far has proven that the removal of the required licensing notices and copies by this project did not happen in error, but in ill will of private reconsideration.

With respect, your assertions do not constitute proof.

This issue and discussion should be seen as a pre-litigation attempt to resolve the matter, one either eXist Solutions or FSF or the contributors to the project can spare if this discussion would not lead to the desired outcome, which is the restoration of the LGPL in this project to the parts which were originally licensed under it.

Again, with respect, this is your desired outcome, not necessarily the legally correct one.

I just think that interested parties deserve to know whether your attempts to resolve the matter are good-natured interference, or an official overture - and if so, on whose behalf. I'm sorry, even though you are under no obligation, I think it is absolutely relevant, and very much at odds with your position on 'open-ness'.

I think everyone understands that the thrust of your argument is that section 3 of the LPGL does not allow relicensing - you have made it 5 times in your last reply to @adamretter, above. That is clearly not (quite) the understanding of Evolved Binary. Unless you are a copyright lawyer (and how would we know?), I don't think it's unreasonable for Evolved Binary to seek (further) legal advice; again, just because you are asserting your understanding of the license does not mean that everyone has to agree with it. If it is contended, that is why we have the courts.

Personally, if we are to start throwing accusations of ill-will around, I think that any third party reading this thread can compare a willingness to co-operate with vague legal threats and make their own conclusions.

[dguhl]

That is clearly not (quite) the understanding of Evolved Binary.

Which, according to Section 9 LGPL 2.1, would only matter if the condition under which the contribution has been made would have been made obvious to everyone on the time of contribution - which didn't happen at the time and therefore waived every deliberation, especially those which were only disclosed in hindsight. Also Section 1 does not allow the removal of notice. I mentioned it that often because Evolved Binary doesn't seem to understand the matter: you can license contributions under conditions, if a) the conditions don't conflict with the license and b) the conditions are stated clearly with the licensing notice or the license. None of that happened. These conditions can be, but don't have to be, a second license alongside the required copy of LGPL, which - even undisputed by you - was removed by this project. You can double-license, but only those parts which you either double-licensed in the first place or those which don't originate from the LGPL-licensed parts.

Anything else, and a lot of what happened here, is a violation of the LGPL and the copyright of at least, but not limited to, the FSF and the authors who contributed. Pre-deliberations under which the contributions of this particular author might or might not have been made, were undisclosed to any third party until this project has been forked from its original, the other authors as well as everyone who legally obtained their rightful copy of the works and are therefore waived according to Section 9.

Again, with respect, this is your desired outcome, not necessarily the legally correct one.

If that is how you interpret the LGPL, then there is really no other option left than to litigate.

Personally, if we are to start throwing accusations of ill-will around, I think that any third party reading this thread can compare a willingness to co-operate with vague legal threats and make their own conclusions.

As far as I can see, there were no amendments to the repository or any other attempts made to restore what the LGPL legally demands - foremost its notices and its copy -, so nobody in this thread would be able to recognize a willingness to co-operate so far.

[yamahito]

the required copy of LGPL, which - even undisputed by you - was removed by this project.

I'm not sure what the 'even' means here: I don't have a particular vested interest.

I agree I haven't disputed it; neither have I acknowledged it.

I assume your position is unchanged in regards to my other comments:

I just think that interested parties deserve to know whether your attempts to resolve the matter are good-natured interference, or an official overture - and if so, on whose behalf. I'm sorry, even though you are under no obligation, I think it is absolutely relevant, and very much at odds with your position on 'open-ness'.

Can you at least tell the community if you are an IP or licensing lawyer, or have some professional expertise in that field? Or else confirm that you are a passionate amateur advocate? I do not mean to imply any criticism regardless of the answer, I just think that it's relevant context to your claims in the issue.

[dguhl]

This project has time until June 4th to restore the legitimacy of its copy of LGPL-protected works. Neglecting to amend the copy with the required copy of license and restoration of license notices to LGPL-protected parts of the copy will lead to my recommendation to responsible parties with vested interest in their copyright to litigate the matter in court.

[yamahito]

I repeat that I have vested interest or authority in neither EvolvedBinary nor eXist, so I hope you throwing your toys out of the pram isn't in response to my enquiries.

Legal advice is rarely sought and given in 2 days, let alone on the whim of a petulant stranger on the internet, however. This is not a good look for you, in my opinion, and needlessly complicates any legitimate licensing issue which, of course, needs to be resolved.

[dguhl]

Legal advice is rarely sought and given in 2 days

The issue was open for five days.

This is not a good look for you, in my opinion

Since you don't have a vested interest or authority in neither Evolved Binary nor eXist, you're not the person addressed by this issue and therefore, with respect, your opinion doesn't matter.