Re: Update to KDE Licence Policy

On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 10:04:42PM -0400, Maksim Orlovich wrote:
> >> I'd rather not require any "or later". The reason why people removed
> >> them
> >> in the first place is because they are not comfortable releasing their
> >> code under a license whose terms aren't known to anybody yet. Regardless
> >> of how much we trust the e.V. or the FSF.
> >
> > Then we will be left in the unacceptable situation where we can no
> > longer use vital dependencies such as libsmbclient which move to new
> > versions of the GPL when we can't because someone who wrote an part of
> > KDE licenced without allowing later versions to be approved has fallen
> > off the internet.
> 
> IIRC there are already files in kdelibs without the 'or later' clause.

Yes, 
http://kubuntu.org/~jriddell/tmp/KDE-GPLv2-only-copyright-holders
http://kubuntu.org/~jriddell/tmp/KDE-extragear-GPLv2-only-copyright-holders
http://kubuntu.org/~jriddell/tmp/KDE-koffice-GPLv2-only

Hopefully we can chace up those people

> And, I am certainly not comfortable with trusting the FSF with control
> over license of my code.

That's why the draft policy says the e.V. can decide on future GPL
versions, not the FSF.

> Other comments:
> 1. Shouldn't MIT license be acceptable for libs as well? It's basically
> the same thing as X11 and BSD, no?

That did seem strange to me, it was the case in the old policy, but if
there's no reason for it, that should be changed.

> 2. As currently worded the proposal can be read to mean like LGPL3-only
> licensed code is acceptable, which is of course currently not possible due
> to the Qt licensing.

Which part reads like that?

> 3. IMHO the discussion should move to a public list, since not everyone
> affected by it may be an eV member.

This thread is on kde-licensing, I don't know why people keep replying
to ev-membership.

Jonathan