[kde-community] licence policy updates

Jonathan Riddell jr at jriddell.org
Fri Feb 14 10:31:24 GMT 2014


I've made some proposed changes to the KDE Licensing Policy

http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy/Draft

Most significant is the inclusion of GPL 3+ as an option in response
to a request by GCompris and a desire voiced by a few people not to
treat it as an exception.

Our current policy is designed to allow maxium code reuse around KDE
and beyond, allowing GPL 3+ would mean some code could not be reused
in GPL 2+ code without a relicence, but as pointed out this problem
already happens when moving GPL 2 code to platform.  The policy has
nothing to do with whether GPL 2 or 3 is more or less commercially
acceptable.  Given a blank sheet I'd pick GPL 3 every time as it
prevents DRM lock-in and patent abuse.

Changes...

#* '''GPL''' version 3 or later, where a KDE repository uses this it must be clearly marked by adding the full licence in a file called COPYING.GPL3 in the top directory of the repository
...and add GPL 3 headers

kdebase-runtime -> kde-runtime
add kde frameworks to "platform" needing LGPL

#* Code copied from Qt may be licenced under '''GPL''' version 2 or version 3 or later versions approved by Trolltech ASA and the KDE Free Qt Foundation
->
#* Code copied from Qt may be licenced under '''GPL''' version 2 or later versions

Icons in kdelibs, kdepimlibs or kdebase runtime
->
Icons in oxygen-icons

add rationale at top

add
#:Note code may not be copied from Qt into KDE Platform as Qt is LGPL 2.1 only which would prevent it being used under LGPL 3

# Windows installer files using the WiX Toolset may be licenced under the Common Public Licence 1.0


Jonathan



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