BoF Input: Positive Message for SW License Presentation

Andreas Cord-Landwehr cordlandwehr at kde.org
Tue Sep 8 21:32:57 BST 2020


Hi, in prepartion of the tomorrows BoF regarding better presentation of our 
license statements I tried to write down some initial approach.

BIG DISCLAIMER: This is neither complete, nor precise enough, and possible 
even incorrect/needs discussion. -- The sole purpose is to have a discussion 
starting point how the general message *could* be carried when explaining a 
developer with not much open source experience what a certain library license 
meants to them.

For any discussions, I suggest to move them into the BoF (9 UTC) and 
afterwards for sure something completely different will come out of the BoF :)

Cheers,
Andreas

DEVELOPER PERSPECTIVE (focus on KF5)
----------------------
**BSD**
For you as a developer
- you can use this library and all of its features for free
- you can study the code and improve it
- this license allows you to combine it with own MIT, BSD, GPLv2, LGPLv3, 
GPLv3 and even proprietary code
... and in return
- you have to give attribution to the copyright holders of the code
---------------------
**LGPL 2.1**
For you as a developer
- you can use this library and all of its features for free
- you can study the code and improve it
- you can combine it via dynamic linking with libraries and applications, 
without having the license affect your own code
- any of your change so the code are safeguarded by the same license
- this license allows you to combine it with own MIT, BSD, GPLv2, LGPLv3, 
GPLv3
... and in return
- you have to provide access to the source code of the library
- any enhancement of the library must be published under the same license
---------------------
**LGPL 3.0**
For you as a developer
- you can use this library and all of its features for free
- you can study the code and improve it
- you can combine it via dynamic linking with libraries and applications, 
without having the license affect your own code
- any of your change are safeguarded by the same license
- this license allows you to combine it with own MIT, BSD, LGPLv3, GPLv3 and 
APL-2.0
... and in return
- you have to provide access to the source code of the library
- any enhancement of the library must be published under the same license
- you have to provide explenation how to update the library





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