Re: [Savannah-hackers] submission of twilight GUI - savannah.nongnu.org

[Sylvain Beucler]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 12:50:02PM +0300, Stelios Xanthakis wrote:
> 
> 
> It's not making sense.
> 
> On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Sylvain Beucler wrote:
> >>So it seems more fair that it's all under python
> >>license (otherwise I would prefer a different
> >>license for each wrapper: the license of the toolkit
> >>wrapped).
> >
> >Tell me if I am wrong, but if you are releasing each wrapper
> >independently, then your project is not very useful, since there are
> >already such individual wrappers. If on the contrary you release all
> >the wrapper under a single interface, then you need to comply with
> >each wrapper's license for this meta-wrapper. For now, the GNU GPL is
> >the only license that complies with the 4 toolkits you mentioned.
> >
> 
> I think it is unfair to put the other -more liberal-
> projects under GPL. Let me explain:
> If someone doesn't agree to GPL, he won't have PyQT
> installed in the first place so he will be *unable* to
> use the PyQT wrapper anyway.
> In other words, *using* the wrapper automatically
> means that the user has accepted the license of the toolkit
> wrapped.
> 
> So, a developer who doesn't accept GPL may develop
> using another wrapper but the user who accepted the
> termd and conditions of pyqt shall be able to render
> the application in pyqt.
> 
> We have seen BSD projects including GPL code and GPL project
> including BSD code.

If you combine mBSD+GNU GPL, the resulting project is under the GNU
GPL, not the mBSD.

> So why isn't it possible to distribute the four files in one
> package, each file under its own license again?

You can release each wrapper under the underlying toolkit's license
indeed.

However, if you release an application like run2.py, it is using all
wrappers, and thus have to respect each wrapper license, and thus has
to be released under the GNU GPL.

If the developer decide not to use the Qt wrapper, ok. But it the user
is changing that (hence, becoming another developer), then the project
as a whole will be under the GNU GPL, and each component has to be
GPL-compatible.

Since I expect the users of your project to use all wrappers, it would
be fair to either document that issue, or release unambiguously your
project under the GNU GPL.

-- 
Sylvain