Re: jami iOS version and GPL

[Amin Bandali]

Greg Troxel writes:

> I looked at the download page (because of a previous message) and was
> surprised to see an iOS link, because I had the impression Jami was GPL
> rather than some permissive license.  I looked at the repo and sure
> enough GPL3.

Yes, Jami is licensed under GPLv3+.

> As I understand Apple's app store terms, users who receive software have
> to agree to not distribute it all, let alone modify it, and this is
> incompatible with the GPL.
>
> I looked at CONTRIBUTING, and there's no CLA (yay!) so this seems to be
> the usual inbound=outbound (yay again!).   So there are likely many
> copyright holders, rather than SFL being the sole holder, and all of
> them would need to consent to dual licensing.
>
> So I wonder if someone could explain how this works.  Do app store users
> who receive an ios binary have the legal right to resdistribute it?  Are
> they prevented from doing so by technical means?
>
> Is there some proprietary dual licensing scheme happening?

Actually, the Jami team does kindly ask that folks contributing a
'nontrivial' amount of changes (more than 15 lines of code, cumulative
for each contributor) to assign the copyright for their changes to
Savoir-faire Linux (perhaps this should be clarified / better
documented).  I believe that's how the app store issue is sidestepped.

Below is an excerpt of the copyright assignment agreement letter we
send to contributors contributing 'nontrivial' amount of changes:

,----
| SFL mostly focuses on support services and custom development, but
| it also explores the possibility of selling GPL exceptions, so even
| as Jami remains Free Software under the GPLv3 or later, SFL could
| offer, to a specific client, to re-license a part of Jami for their
| specific purposes.
| 
| Two articles by rms on selling exceptions and copyright assignment:
| - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling-exceptions.en.html
| - https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/assigning-copyright
| 
| SFL pledges that every improvement to Jami made by SFL will always
| be redistributed under the GPL, as the vision remains to build a
| Free and universal distributed communication platform.
`----

> Thanks,
> Greg
>

Hope this helps.

Best,
amin