[Kde-extra-gear] KDE SVN license policy

[Ian Monroe]

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 5:58 PM, Robby Stephenson <robby at periapsis.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm about to move Tellico out of playground and into kdereview, and one of
> the things I was reviewing was the license policy at
> http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Policies/Licensing_Policy
>
> I need a little help with the english wording which confuses me.
>
> First, Tellico has been licensed under GPL2 from the beginning (2001 or so).
> I removed the (or later version) clause from the license because it didn't
> make sense to me to allow licensing under terms which I did not know at the
> time.
>
> Tellico falls under Bullet 5 on the techbase page. Do I understand the first
> sub-bullet under 5 to mean the (or later version) clause is required, or
> does it mean that I get to choose GPL2 or later version myself?
>
> In other words, I'm required to dual-license or tri-license, correct? Rather
> than having the author choose the license version, I'm required to allow the
> user to choose the license version? I'm planning to stay with the GPL, I'm
> just trying to understand the restriction.
>
> If I'm reading that right, is there any particular reason? I've read a few
> things about the faults of the GPL2 license, but none seem to carry enough
> weight to forbid a GPL2-only license. Just curious...

Its because of GPLv3. If you link to a library thats GPLv3 only (say,
samba), then it would be illegal to use GPLv2.

Ian