KDE/kdevplatform/language

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 22.05.09 13:17:45, Jakob Petsovits wrote:
> On Thursday 21 May 2009, Killerfox wrote:
> > On Thursday 21 May 2009 01:06:00 pm Jakob Petsovits wrote:
> > > >  A             codegen/licenses/GPL v1
> > >
> > > (...)
> > >
> > > Er, really? GPL v1? I thought that one is long obsolete and replaced by
> > > v2 in pretty much all cases. Are you sure this is suitable for shipping
> > > by default?
> >
> > Well technically v2 is obsolete as well, replaced by v3. However a lot of
> > software still uses it. I don't think there is an issue with providing it,
> > in the end it is the user's choice.
> 
> That's not quite the same though. v3 is not only an update but also comes with 
> a set of new restrictions (the DRM stuff) which caused a "philosophical" issue 
> with the v2→v3 migration. On the other hand, the v1→v2 migration was 
> uncontroversial and happened a long time ago (1991?), so you'll hardly find 
> *any* projects anymore using v1, or anyone still suggesting it as a license.
> 
> Of course it's the user's choice, but then again the user could also choose to 
> use CDDL (which is in fact an improved Mozilla license, so maybe it should 
> replace the MPL in this set), Affero GPL, CC-SA, Artistic, Eclipse Public 
> License, IBM Public License, Microsoft Public License, plain public domain, 
> PHP or Perl licenses, WTFPL, or whatever licenses are out there.
> 
> I think the default choice should be a sensible, well-selected set of most 
> commonly used and widely accepted licenses. That is true for GPL v2 *and* v3, 
> but certainly not for GPL v1.
> 
> Also, any specific reason why Apache v1 is included instead of the improved and 
> GPL-compatible v2? Where is LGPL v3? And what makes the Boost license special 
> that it is included as only project-specific license in the set? Isn't the 
> official name for the MIT license "MIT X11" (because there are other MIT 
> licenses too)?
> 
> I don't want to sound harsh (in fact, having a few licenses for pre-selection 
> does rock) but the imported selection looks a bit random to me. If it is 
> actually intended for guiding the user to an appropriate license, I think the 
> current choice is not yet an ideal one.

I agree with Jakob in that we should provide a sensible list of default
licenses that are "suggested" to be used. So how about collecting a list.
I'll make a start with the obvious ones I can come up from the top of my
head:

- GPL v2
- GPL v3
- LGPL v2
- LGPL v3
- MIT X11
- BSD
- EPL
- CDDL
- Apache v2

Eventually we could add the kde-used "(L)GPL v2 or later" and "(L)GPL v2 or later
as approved by KDE e.V." (after all we're a KDE app, right?)?

Andreas

-- 
You have had a long-term stimulation relative to business.