DRAFT document on coding conventions in kde libraries

[Thiago Macieira]

Nicolas Goutte wrote:
>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.

No, sorry, it's really clear: libraries are what you _link_ to. You can't 
link to kdeinit modules (that's why they're modules, not libraries). 
Let's start using the terms correctly to avoid misunderstanding: you link 
to libraries, not modules; you load modules, not libraries. They are not 
interchangeable.

So, all KDE libraries are LGPL. What I'm not sure is if the modules have 
to be too, especially KParts.

Any given program can load any given KPart. IANAL, so I don't know how 
this affects non-GPL-compatible programs.

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

If you commit a new file, the file is placed under the license that you 
chose in the header.

No file may exist without a license header. That's why our commit scripts 
warn you of that.

-- 
  Thiago Macieira  -  thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
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