Re: EBN: Copyright and License

On Tuesday 17 Jul 2007, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> > On 17.07.07 19:03:54, Ian Wadham wrote:
> >> Is KDE 4 adopting [GPLv3]?
> >
> > AFAIK thats not possible unless TT changes Qt license to gpl2 or
> > later (its gpl2 only atm).
>
> It is correct that KDE cannot use "GPLv3". AFAIK however KDE can use
> "GPLv3 + permission to link to Qt" (additional permissions may be
> needed for other parts of KDE, but probably not since libs are LGPL.

I don't believe so.  Qt is licensed under the GPL 2, and as such cannot 
link to any incompatible (ie: imposing any restrictions over and above 
GPL 2) license, including GPLv3.  Otherwise anyone could come up with 
whatever proprietary license they like, and put in "but you can link 
with Qt GPL", and circumvent Qt's licensing system.

If kdelibs was under LGPLv3, it could be licensed under LGPLv3 or GPLv3, 
but not GPLv2.  As a result, you couldn't link it with Qt (and then 
distribute it), because that would require the complete work to be 
under GPLv2.

One thing I found interesting in [L]GPLv3: it allows you to specify a 
proxy to decide on whether future versions of the [L]GPL can be used.  
So every contributor to KDE could license their files as "[L]GPLv3 or, 
at the discretion of KDEev (which shall act as a proxy as in section 14 
of the GPLv3), any later version".  Or something like that (FSF doesn't 
offer a sample text for using a proxy).

Then, at some point in the future, KDEev could say "yes, we allow all 
LGPL- or GPL-licensed KDE code that we act as a proxy for to be used 
under the LGPL or GPL (respectively) version 4".

In fact, right now we'd be able to write it as:

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or
version 3 of the License, or, at the discretion of KDE e.v. (which shall
act as a proxy as in section 14 of version 3 of the License), any later
version.

or

This library is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of
the License, or version 3 of the license, or, at the discretion of
KDE e.v. (which shall act as a proxy as in section 14 of version 3
of the GNU GPL), any later version.

Alex


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