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

[Thomas Zander]

On Friday 14. February 2014 13.02.31 Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > The new twist with GPLv3 is that _more_ companies do not like it
> > (particularly in the device and media industries) so the prospective
> > market
> > grew for relicensing. I also don’t think this is at all relevant to KDE
> > application code, which has not to date seen this practice.
> >
> 
> I kinda explained my point not clearly enough, because of the deviation to
> the commercial exemption. What I meant to say was that I was told most
> companies (I don't know which ones he was referring to, but I concluded it
> included more than just the ones you include) fear the GPLv3 enough to not
> wish to allow it into their systems.

This is a balance; if you write code you put a lot of time and effort into it 
and you don't get any money for it. So in our world you can state how you 
allow others to use it.
If a company that wants to use your code and release it with their commercial 
products comes by you can choose;
You can say its Ok, as long as any changes they make to your software are 
shared for everyone else.
You can also go the other way and allow them to use it without any mention to 
you or any way for you to benefit from them profiting of your work.

People writing code inside of the KDE project continue to have this choice. 
Allowing GPLv3+ doesn't change that.
It just adds one gray-scale step in between the two points I stated above. The 
GPLv3 is arguably more in the direction to the idea that people that profit of 
your work can't profit without sharing that with everyone too.

I'm convinced all of this open-vs-closed talk is irrelevant. There are no 
choices being taken away, just new ones added for KDE developers.

The only thing that is relevant is how it influences and integrates with 
already existing KDE code. And since we already have had a GPLv2-only ban in 
place for many years, that problem is not really much of a problem anymore.


-- 
Thomas Zander