Extending the license policy to include Apache-2.0

[Andreas Cord-Landwehr]

On Freitag, 17. September 2021 07:42:05 CEST Thiago Macieira wrote:
> On Thursday, 16 September 2021 10:58:55 PDT Andreas Cord-Landwehr wrote:
> > Hi, now with the very recent release of openssl 3.0 [1], I think we have
> > to
> > eventually face the question what to do in this regard. But the not too
> > small number of historic GPL-2.0-only files [2] yet is a problem.
> 
> That's an orthogonal problem. To be clear: it is a problem for the GPL-2.0-
> only code, but it's irrelevant as to whether we accept Apache-2.0 content in
> KDE code.
> 
> We already require at least GPLv3 and the v3 is compatible with Apache-2.0.
> So we already have a solution and all compliant code has no problem with
> OpenSSL 3.0.

Hi, I both agree and disagree that this is orthogonal :)

Yes, it is orthogonal because we discuss whether to include Apache 2 in our 
accepted license list. I fully see your point.

Yet no, it is not orthogonal IMHO, because our license list strives for 
compatibility between the licenses in our code base. If we would say that the 
GPL-2.0-only files are legacy/policy violation/or just deprecated, then I find 
it hard to say that we disallow Apache 2 while allowing e.g. BSD-2-Clause. My 
main argument would be that Apache 2 is fully compatible with GPL-3.0 (at 
least in the regard when being integrated with GPL-3.0 code) and in my 
understanding it falls into the license policy section about "if it helps with 
compatibility".

Cheers,
Andreas