Collecting arguments for licence change

[Achim D. Brucker]

Hi,
I'm trying to convince a group of authors (I'm not one of those) 
to release their software with a free licence (preferable (L)GPL or 
at least a (L)GPL compatible one).

The project is a (in its community) well known and highly respected 
piece of software which was initially distributed under a non-free 
licence, mainly:
 "Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and 
  its documentation for any non-commercial purpose and without fee 
  is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice appears 
  in all copies and that both the copyright notice and this permission 
  notice and warranty disclaimer appear in supporting documentation, and 
  that the name of the University xxx not be used in advertising or 
  publicity pertaining to distribution of the software without specific, 
  written prior permission."
Where in the real licence terms, "University xxx" stands for two 
European Universities.
  
Today, the copyright situation is somewhat complicated.
 - the above copyright note seems to be still the intended "main" 
   copyright note, as it is located in a file called "COPYRIGHT" 
   within the top-level directory of the (source) distribution.
 - Within the source files there are at least three types of copyright
   headers:
   1) // Author:    Joe Developer
      // Copyright: 2003 University xxx

   2) // Author:    Jim Developer
      // Copyright: GPL (GNU General Public License)

   3) // Author:    Fred Developer
      // Copyright: Fred Developer
    
   Note that one can assume that all authors have written the code
   "from scratch" for this project, e.g. Jim Developer will argue 
   for changing the licence but would not accuse the project of 
   disrespecting his licence.
   
At the moment I'm in the brain-storming phase, e.g. I'm collection 
any thoughts, ideas, arguments, problems which I can use to convince
the copyright holder to change the licence. My rather unstructured 
and unpolished list is as follows:
- IMHO the actual licence constellation is highly contradictory 
  and therefore  "default copyright" rules come into force, which 
  means (as I understood it) that a user is not allowed to do anything 
   with the software...

- recently they launched a public project where they are collecting 
  examples for their software. They strictly require that the authors
  of the examples must licence their work under the LGPL.
  This prohibits code exchange in both directions, using code from 
  the project in the example and also using the submitted examples
  in the main distribution (I think, this could be a kind of "killer
  argument"). 

- releasing the project as free software opens the door to broader
  publicity, e.g. inclusion of the project into Debian GNU/Linux,
  which IMHO is a great chance for projects in a non-mainstream
  area. (After a licence change, I would volunteer to provide Debian
  packages)
  
- I plan also an offer to produce a Gnoppix (www.gnoppix.org) setup which 
  provides a bootable demo system which should also be a great gain to 
  the project  as system is quite complex to install (at least in some 
  sense).

As I have the suspicion that the important people cannot be conviced 
on the legal level (the contradiction problem of the actual
constellation) I try mainly to argue with the benefits of releasing 
the software as free software.

Do you have any hints, guidelines, and/or further arguments for me? Any
ideas how to start the licence discussion in a friendly way. 

What are the modest licence changes needed to get a (L)GPL compatible
one?

Thanks,
	Achim