KCalendarSystemChinese - calendar for Chinese in KDE 4

[John Layt]

On Saturday 22 December 2007, John Layt wrote:
> > There is no code for Chinese calendar, which is mostly used by people
> > in or from East Asia, China, Korean, Japan and so on.
> >
> > I just based on the code of ccal and create KCalendarSystemChinese.
>
> That's brilliant, the Chinese Calendar was on my To Do list for 4.1, so
> you've saved me the effort.  Obviously we won't be able to include this
> 4.0, but it can be included in the 4.1 branch when it opens after the 4.0
> release.
>
> I'll look at your code at some point over the Christmas holiday break and
> answer your other questions, but I can quickly answer these two.

Hi again,

I've started having a look at this, and there are a lot of code style issues 
that would need to be resolved before it could be included in kdelibs, but 
nothing insolvable.  However, there is a larger issue that needs to be 
addressed first and that is licensing, which as it stands would prevent us 
ever using the code.  

The ccal code you've included is licensed under the GPL, but kdelibs policy is 
to use the LGPL.  Unfortunately, while LGPL -> GPL relicensing is allowed, 
you cannot reuse GPL code under the LGPL without first obtaining the 
permission of the author.  

I have yet to locate the license conditions for the NOVAS library routines you 
copied, but as they are the product of the US Navy I'm assuming they are in 
the Public Domain and so should be OK.  From a style point, these routines 
should be separated out into a private class, or better yet see if KStars 
provides equivalent routines that can be shared as I'm sure other 
astronomically based calendars could reuse them.

The Lunar Outreach code appears to be licensed "for non-commercial usage only" 
which is also unacceptable to be reused without the authors express 
permission (we apparently have hit this before in 2000, see 
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=96521623221875&w=2).  Again, perhaps 
KStars could provide what you need?

(As an aside, links to the homepages for the included code should be in the 
code header as part of the documentation to make tracing it easier.)

Hopefully, you don't find this too discouraging, but we do need to keep on the 
right side of copyright law.  If you are able to either obtain permission to 
relicense under the LGPL (and we would need to archive the confirmation 
emails somewhere), or can obtain suitable replacement LGPL or Public Domain 
code, then I'd be very happy to help you improve the code to meet kdelibs 
standards.

Cheers!

John.

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