Relicensing Questions

[Andras Mantia]

Forgot to send the KDevelop lists...

About my contributions, I agree with relicensing to any KDE eV approved 
license you pick (including future ones).

I also found the list with the current approval from various developers:
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_Relicensing#Current_Reply_List

Andras

On Saturday, November 26, 2011 17:43:08 Milian Wolff wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I want to start cleaning up the licensing mess in KDevplatform, KDevelop and
> related plugins.
> 
> Are there any tools that tell me:
> 
> a) current license of a file

Maybe krazy can do it?

> b) authors that contributed to that file

Only by reading the history.

> 
> Regarding b) I wonder:
> Is anyone who ever contributed a patch to a given file automatically
> copyright holder? 

Probably depends on the country and the amount of contribution (changing a 
comment probably doesn't give anybody copyright assignment).

> I.e. do we have to contact everybody in our full git log?

That is the safest way and it is usually how others proceed on relicensing. 
I've been asked such questions for projects where I contributed only a little.

> Or is it "enough" to contact those who added themselves to the header of a
> given file, and hence explictly stating that they hold copyright on (parts
> of) a file?

That's probably not enough.

> Are there any best-practices when it comes to this tasks? Any suggestions,
> tips and tricks?
> 
> Right now I my general idea is:
> 
> - contact all authors, ask whether they agree to relicensing
> - for every file where all authors agreed: relicense
> 
> PS: If you wonder what license we want to relicense to:
> http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy
> -> (L)GPL v2+ and higher as approved by KDE e.V.

You might try this, but you should be careful that many do NOT agree with a 
generic (L)GPL 2+, while they might agree with (L)GPL 2 and 3.
We had once a list with people agree/disagree with specific licenses, can't find 
it right now though.

Changing the license of a GPL projects is a PITA, but it is deliberately so. 
:)

Andras