DRAFT document on coding conventions in kde libraries

[Nicolas Goutte]

On Friday 10 March 2006 15:30, Andras Mantia wrote:
> On Friday 10 March 2006 16:24, Nicolas Goutte wrote:
> > As for not having the license in the file, that is surely more
> > problematic, as we have no idea about the license of that exact file
> > (e.g. many Perl/Python scripts in KDE). So such files having only the
> > minimal license: "You can use it for KDE" which is not really
> > open-source.
>
> Cannot KDE (the project or the eV) make a rule that:
> 1) all (code) files inside the KDE repository are under GPL (LGPL for
> libraries) unless otherwise stated

I do not think that it would completely clarify the problem.

First what are libraries, what not? Especially with KDE's kdeinit system that 
is even less clear.

Also what GPL/LGPL? Nowaday you have already the choice of GPL 2, GPL 2+, 
LGPL 2, LGPL 2+, LGPL 2.1, LGPL 2.1+ (and GPL 3 is under construction).

The second problem: would commiting to KDE SVN be recognied as actively 
setting the new file under GPL/LGPL (or whatever)?

The main problem is what is not clear can be taken against KDE in a court 
case, what is clear cannot be "returned" against KDE so easily.

> 2) committed code must be under a GPL/LGPL compatible licence.

Partially using Qt4 will force GPL-compatibility in long term (as Qt is QPL 
only under X11).

However documentation is in KDE SVN but is under a non-GPL, non-LGPL license: 
FDL

>
> I have no idea if 1) would be legal or not (certainly not for already
> committed files), but would make sense to clear this mess a little.
>
> Andras

Have a nice day!