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

[Laszlo Papp]

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?

Before I reply to the other emails in this thread, what I miss from
this proposal is the _reason_ for proposing a new license for _new_
projects (not existing code base going through the incubator effort).

I would personally hope for a list of advantages and improvements
before even proposing a KDE wide license change. Could someone please
summarize the points of GPLv3 that would make KDE a better place for
new projects? What issue are we trying to solve with this? Are we just
trying to aid the incubator effort? In that case, it is possible to
limit this to that scenario for now until the need arises for more. Do
we have any issues for new projects that would be born in KDE that
rejected being part of KDE due to the current licensing policy missing
GPLv3?