[kde-community] Request to join the Kde incubator for GCompris

Laszlo Papp lpapp at kde.org
Thu Feb 13 20:32:36 GMT 2014


On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 8:19 PM, Albert Astals Cid <aacid at kde.org> wrote:
> El Dijous, 13 de febrer de 2014, a les 13:42:15, Bruno Coudoin va escriure:
>> Le 13/02/2014 10:26, Jonathan Riddell a écrit :
>> > On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 04:48:00AM +0100, Bruno Coudoin wrote:
>> >> I am the creator and main developer of the educational software GCompris
>> >> (http://gcompris.net). It is released under GPL V3+. It contains about
>> >> 140 activities for children 2 to 10 years old.
>> >
>> > It would be great to have GCompris join the KDE community.  Although
>> > I'll only agree to it if you promise not to change the name :)
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I did not mention that point and yes I agree with you, GCompris has
>> build a worldwide reputation under that name. Our users don't know and
>> don't care which underlying toolkit it is build on.
>>
>> For those who don't know it, GCompris is a pun word, in French it is
>> pronounced 'j'ai compris' which means 'I have understood'. One may think
>> that the 'G' means Gnome or Gtk but the 'G' in GCompris means Gnu and I
>> forgot to mention that GCompris is officially a Gnu project:
>> http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-software-gcompris.en.html
>>
>> > Our licence policy requires projects to be GPL 2+, this is simply to
>> > ensure an easy life when sharing code between projects in KDE.
>> > http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy
>> >
>> > Would you be willing and able to relicence to GPL 2+?
>>
>> The change to GPL 3+ was done to comply with the requirement of being a
>> Gnu project. As such it is not appropriate to go backward now.
>
> As far as i see that leaves us with three options:
>  A) Say "No sorry" to GCompris because doesn't follow our licensing policy
>  B) Do an "ad-hoc" exception for GCompris
>  C) Change the Licensing Policy
>
> A is obviously not what we want
>
> B would mean the status quo would change the least but it'd also bring some
> problems like "Why exception for GCompris and not ADFASDC?"
>
> So maybe it's time we think about adding GPLv3+ to the Licensing Policy?

Based on what I heard about GPLv3, for my personal projects, it is a
big no-no, and I would not like to see it introduced in my current
understanding. It has some serious shortcomings, and also the main
reason why Landley left busybox after six years of work.

However, I think the topic is quite complex, and I do not think geek
consensus should decide here. It would be better to involve the KDE/Qt
foundation, too, because they might have more clear idea about it what
it means to KDE.



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