Re: Copyright/licensing action plan + a sample [PATCH]

[Joseph Wakeling]

Reinhold Kainhofer wrote:
> Ouch. so as soon as a LGPLv3 version of guile comes out, lilypond can't use 
> guile any more, because LGPLv3 is not compatible with GPLv2... So, lilypond 
> then has to switch to GPLv3... But then we have a problem with freetype, 
> which 
> is FTL (BSD with advertising clause, thus incompatible with GPL) or GPLv2 
> only... 

Aaaaargh.  I wasn't aware of the LGPLv3/GPLv2 incompatibility until now.
 That's nasty. :-(

> I really love it how FSF handles the GPL purely for political reasons... 
> (Which might make sense from an abstract viewpoint, but in daily developer 
> life that is just counterproductive and hindering productive development!)
> 
> To be honest, as an open source developer, I'm really starting disliking the 
> GPL, simply for practical reasons.

Well, they are a political organisation.  They aren't there to make your
life as a developer easy -- and if you follow their practical advice,
you don't end up in these situations.  (They are also generally pretty
good about taking into account the practical issues that will be raised
by any licensing change, and trying to minimise them.)

>> That was one of the motivations for tracking who was OK with GPLv2+ --
>> to have an advance list of people ready for such an eventuality.
> 
> See e.g. what KDE did a while ago:
> http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_Relicensing
> 
> I propose we also keep such a list (publicly available) about what the devs 
> allow with regards to their licenses.

I am already doing so, although not as detailed as KDE's.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkXkBLpoZm-_dHdkUUZRRVJvX2ZHWVpOeloyTU00SHc&hl=en

It's on Sheet 2 :-)

Best wishes,

    -- Joe