[kde-community] licence policy updates

[Laszlo Papp]

On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 1:03 AM, Michael Pyne <mpyne at kde.org> wrote:
> On Fri, February 14, 2014 20:34:51 Albert Astals Cid wrote:
>> El Divendres, 14 de febrer de 2014, a les 10:31:24, Jonathan Riddell va
>>
>> escriure:
>> > 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
>>
>> Do you guys think that it would make sense to explicitely suggest that
>> applications use the "GPL version 2 or version 3 or later versions approved
>> by the membership of KDE e.V. " variant unless they really have special
>> needs in aim to improve inter-app code shareability?
>
> That makes sense.
>
> In fact it would probably be a good idea to develop a "How to Pick a License"
> guide to help inform developers on *why* they'd pick a license, in addition to
> this document informing developers on *what* is appropriate to choose.

Yes, I agree. I think it would be nice and useful to have something
like that somewhere in the infrastructure.

(This is what I also discussed with Aaron in the other thread, and
meant to bring up earlier in this thread.)

> This doesn't need to be directive policy of course, but presumably there is
> some type of license structure that we as a project would generally prefer for
> our developers to choose, all things being equal. The big thing I worry about
> is that figuring out what we thing would turn into a giant bikeshed discussion
> and I doubt any of us have time for that. :P
>
> Perhaps something similar exists online as well.

Yes, that would be great. If something like that exists, we could use
that as an external reference if it is good enough. Alternatively, it
could at least serve some good study material for writing ours.