[Kde-hardware-devel] HUPnP and libsolid Licenses - Would be it a problem?

[Armijn Hemel]

hi,

>         > Since HUPnP is distributed under a GPLv3 license and
>         libsolid (and
>         > Qt/KDE as well) is LGPL, this license "incompatibility"
>         wouldn't be a
>         > problem for us? I'm not a license expert, but AFAIK, if a
>         given
>         > library made under LGPL uses another library distributed
>         under GPL
>         > this makes the first (in our case Solid library) to become
>         GPL, right?
>         
>         
>         No.
> 
> 
> As I said, I'm not a license expert. Sorry for the ignorance.

There is a lot of confusion about licenses, so I don't blame you. This
is complicated stuff. Copyright law is not as black and white as
programming is and differs per jurisdiction, which does not make it
easier :-)

The license itself for libsolid would not change in such a case, but if
you distribute it in the way you describe, it has to be distributed in a
GPL-compatible way (the magic word being 'compatible').

>         >  Assuming that it's not a desired consequence, could Tuomo
>         change
>         > HUPnP license to LGPL?
>         
>         
>         Sigh. Step away from the keyboard *NOW* before any of you
>         makes a big
>         (licensing) mistake.
> 
> 
> Ok, calm down. That's exactly what we want to avoid. ;-)

Whoops. I should have used more smileys. It was meant as tongue in
cheek. I suppose I owe you a beer now...

>         First of all, *which* LGPL are you talking about? LGPLv2.1 or
>         LGPLv3?
>         They are not compatible. Mixing GPLv3 code with LGPLv2.1: no
>         go. Mixing
>         GPLv2 code with LGPLv3: no go. Just don't do it (or at least:
>         don't
>         distribute it).
> 
> 
> HUPnP is GPLv3. Solid (as all kdelibs) is LGPLv2.1.

Those two are not compatible AFAIK.

>         Before you ask for license changes, please contact the legal
>         dude at KDE
>         e.V. first to see which licenses are OK and which are not. The
>         legal
>         dude is Adriaan de Groot and he is on this list AFAIK. Or,
>         better, mail
>         KDE e.V. about this: ev at kde.org
>         
> 
> 
> I think I'm not asking for any KDE license change, since HUPnP is not
> a project under KDE umbrella AFAIK.

I don't think that a KDE license change is going to happen anytime soon
anyway (I heard it was already quite painful last time they consolidated
licenses). But if you would want to link with HUPnP and make it a
dependency for libsolid that is going to be an issue (if you distribute
it).

If you will be at Akademy there will be a legal talk on Saturday
http://akademy2010.kde.org/program/conference#saturday

In the meantime I will try to get hold of Adriaan and make him reply to
this thread.

armijn

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