Dear Geany developers,
is it possible to use the default Geany colour theme (as defined in https://github.com/geany/geany/blob/master/data/filedefs/filetypes.common ) in an MIT licensed project? I have recently switched to KDevelop, created a Geany colour theme for it, and would like to upstream that. https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/syntax-highlighting/-/merge_requests/465
Greetings Julian Groß
Hello,
Le 13/03/2023 à 21:18, Julian Groß via Devel a écrit :
is it possible to use the default Geany colour theme (as defined in https://github.com/geany/geany/blob/master/data/filedefs/filetypes.common ) in an MIT licensed project?
I myself have no problem with this at all, but it might be legally tricky, given GPLv2 is not "compatible" with MIT it would require the approval from everybody that contributed to it (as we don't require contributors to hand over their copyright rights to us). However, you might be so lucky that the colors themselves have never been altered by anybody but a few original authors (my guess would be something like Enrico and/or Nick, and possibly Matthew and I, maybe a few others).
You probably could "fairly easily" (for some definition of that) find the list of people you'd need ACK from using a combination of `git blame`, `git log -G` and or other history scrapping tool.
Or maybe the color scheme itself could be considered not an important enough original work that nobody would really care.
Anyway, good luck, and you have my blessing, for whatever it's worth. Colomban
On Tue, 14 Mar 2023 at 06:25, Julian Groß via Devel devel@lists.geany.org wrote:
Dear Geany developers,
is it possible to use the default Geany colour theme (as defined in https://github.com/geany/geany/blob/master/data/filedefs/filetypes.common ) in an MIT licensed project? I have recently switched to KDevelop, created a Geany colour theme for it, and would like to upstream that. https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/syntax-highlighting/-/merge_requests/465
Note that IANAL (but I know one) and this does not constitute legal advice. And the law in your jurisdiction may be different to mine.
filetypes.common is not explicitly licensed, but it is reasonable to infer that the overall Geany license GPL2+ applies.
That license applies to the copyright, eg the actual file, so a different file in different format is not covered by GPL even if it happens to produce the same colours.
For analogy a photo of a cat is copyright, but that copyright does not prevent other photos of cats, or even of the same cat.
So there it should be ok if a theme written in a different language, JSON, that happens to use the same colours, has a different license.
Cheers Lex
PS Colomban's reply came in just before I sent this, the fundamental mistake (IMHO) he has made is that the copyright covers anything other than the specific work, ie the set of colours rather than the file that specifies them for Geany.
Greetings Julian Groß _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list -- devel@lists.geany.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@lists.geany.org
On Tue, 14 Mar 2023 at 08:02, Lex Trotman elextr@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, 14 Mar 2023 at 06:25, Julian Groß via Devel devel@lists.geany.org wrote:
Dear Geany developers,
is it possible to use the default Geany colour theme (as defined in https://github.com/geany/geany/blob/master/data/filedefs/filetypes.common ) in an MIT licensed project? I have recently switched to KDevelop, created a Geany colour theme for it, and would like to upstream that. https://invent.kde.org/frameworks/syntax-highlighting/-/merge_requests/465
Note that IANAL (but I know one) and this does not constitute legal advice. And the law in your jurisdiction may be different to mine.
filetypes.common is not explicitly licensed, but it is reasonable to infer that the overall Geany license GPL2+ applies.
That license applies to the copyright, eg the actual file, so a different file in different format is not covered by GPL even if it happens to produce the same colours.
For analogy a photo of a cat is copyright, but that copyright does not prevent other photos of cats, or even of the same cat.
So there it should be ok if a theme written in a different language, JSON, that happens to use the same colours, has a different license.
Cheers Lex
PS Colomban's reply came in just before I sent this, the fundamental mistake (IMHO) he has made is that the copyright covers anything other than the specific work, ie the set of colours rather than the file that specifies them for Geany.
PPS of course I found the reference I wanted after I pressed send :-P
From Wikipedia "Copyright is intended to protect the original expression of an idea in the form of a creative work, but not the idea itself"
Greetings Julian Groß _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list -- devel@lists.geany.org To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@lists.geany.org