DRAFT document on coding conventions in kde libraries

[Nicolas Goutte]

On Saturday 11 March 2006 12:49, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> 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.

See, that is what I meant. So where would we draw the limit between what is 
implicitely GPL and what LGPL. That is why I think that it cannot work.

That is differnet from a KDE policy about the same subject. A limit case could 
be discussed and then the result of the discusion put in the file as a clear 
license statement.

But if there is no  license statement, you cannot decide if a file is this or 
that.

>
> >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.

We were talking about files *not* having a copyright header. 

The post-commit hook warns only for C/C++ code but not for Perl, not for 
Python, not for Bash, not for... 

(And I am not talking about old files...)

Have a nice day!