[kde-community] KDE Relicensing Effort

[Dominik Haumann]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2015 at 2:16 AM, Nicolás Alvarez
<nicolas.alvarez at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2015-07-26 19:01 GMT-03:00 Boudhayan Gupta <me at baloneygeek.com>:
>> On 27 July 2015 at 01:23, David Faure <faure at kde.org> wrote:
>>> On Saturday 21 February 2015 11:42:52 Dominik Haumann wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> some time ago, a relicensing effort was started to allow us also using
>>>> the [L]GPLv3 [1]. The linked script (I just blogged about it again [2])
>>>> indeed helped a lot when checking Kate's source code, for instance.
>>>>
>>>> 1. Please add yourself to this script, if you have not done so.
>>
>> I'm not clear about something: Doesn't gplv2+ and lgplv2+ imply gplv23
>> and lgplv23 respectively? What is the difference between GPLv2 or
>> later and GPLv2 or GPLv3?
>>
>> If I mark myself as "gplv2+ lgplv2+ +eV", what rights am I not giving to KDE?
>
> I see two possible interpretations:
>
> - Maybe gplv2+ implies gplv23, so your choice is actually between "no
> relicensing out of v2" or "gplv23: I allow v2 or v3", or "gplv2+: I
> allow any GPL version", and saying gplv23:no gplv2+:yes doesn't make
> sense.
>
> - Or maybe gplv23:no gplv2+:yes means you agree with KDE relicensing
> to "GPLv2 or *any* later version", but you don't give KDE the right to
> relicense as "*only* GPLv2 or v3" which would forbid eg. the GPLv4
> possibility; you explicitly want GPLv4 to be allowed.
>
> I don't know if I'm being clear :)
>
> Can someone confirm which of the interpretations would be correct?

As I understand:
GPLv2 means: GPLv2 only
GPLv23 means: GPLv2 and GPLv3 are fine, but not GPLv4 (if it comes to that)
GPLv2+ means: GPLv2 are fine, or any later version of GPL (but not earlier)
LGPLv2 means: LGPLv2 only
LGPLv23 means: LGPLv2 and LGPLv3 are fine, but not LGPLv4 (if it comes to that)
LGPLv2+ means: LGPLv2 are fine, or any later version of LGPL (but not earlier)
KDE e.V. (or +e.V.) means: You would be fine, if the KDE e.V. changes
the license to something else.

However, the "KDE e.V." thingy is a bit tricky, since for that you
should (and everyone really should) sign the FLA. If it's unclear what
the FLA is exactly about, then we probably should communicate that
more clearly again (and again).

Greetings,
Dominik