[Digikam-devel] GPL3 or not...

[Marcel Wiesweg]

> Hi all,
>
> Looking like KDE4 and Qt4 will be available under GPL version 3 in the
> future, we need to study the case where digiKam + shared extragear libs +
> kipi-plugins need to be moved from GPL2 to GPL3...
>
> What do you need to do for that ? I suspect than all guy who are copyright
> in source code need to be contacted about this change. Right ?

Currently in all files (at least as grep tells me) the license is:
"* This program is free software; you can redistribute it
 * and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
 * Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
 * either version 2, or (at your option)
 * any later version." 	<--

The last clause "any later version" means our license status is GPLv2+, and 
therefore compatible with the GPL3 (you can choose which version to use).
_This means there is nothing that must be done from our side._

As is understand, there is a relicensing effort in KDE to move to GPLv2+
(http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Projects/KDE_Relicensing).
We already have this status.
Qt so far has been "GPLv2 only", but it will now be "GPLv2 or GPLv3".

If we said that we want to make digikam "GPLv3 or later", then this would be a 
real license change, requiring permission from everyone who has contributed 
to the specific source file. Moreover, it would not allow to use "GPLv2 only" 
libraries any more. There is a compatibility chart at the bottom of 
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html
(too complicated for my taste)

>
> For me this is not a problem. All my code can be moved from GPL2 to GPL3...
>
> In case where we still in GPL2, all shared libs used by digiKam will be
> compatible ?
>
> This is include only KDE4 code, not KDE3, If i'm right...
>
> I'm waiting your comments...
>
> Best
>
> Gilles Caulier