Baloo Framework - License Exception

[Albert Astals Cid]

El Dimarts, 9 de desembre de 2014, a les 15:22:15, Vishesh Handa va escriure:
> Hey guys
> 
> I would like to promote Baloo to be a framework for 5.6.
> 
> All of Baloo's code is LGPL, however, we internally use Xapian as a full
> text index (GPL). This would make Baloo GPL. Could we have an exception for
> now?

I don't think you need an exception. 

See https://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy

It says "Source files that are part of a library with a public API must be 
licensed .... LGPL ...."

As far as I understand that is correct for Baloo, right?


And I don't think it makes Baloo GPL.

Baloo is still LGPL, when you aggregate it current Xapian code the result 
becomes GPL, but I could write something different with the same header 
interface as Xapian and make it LGPL, and then the aggregation would be LGPL. 
(Or maybe not, not sure what was the result on that lawsuit saying that APIs 
were copyrightable or not, i guess we could always white-room it :D)

Does what am I saying make any kind of sense?

Cheers,
  Albert

> 
> We have been looking into alternatives since we have a rather large share
> of problems with Xapian [1]. But this will take time, I'm not too keen on
> switching to something on a whim without proper testing. Plus, it would be
> a substantially large change.