Re: Comments on proposal for revised license policy

On Wednesday 12 Sep 2007, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> Maybe it would be good to specify the exact format here, something
> like "Copyright (c) 2007 Cornelius Schumacher <[email protected]>".

Good idea, but without the (c).

> Again it might be good to exactly define how the license header has
> to look like, so include a license header in the policy not only for
> the GPL and LGPL, but also for the other licenses.

I agree.  Then people can copy-paste, too.

> (Irrelevant sidenote: we even could write a program which adds
> license headers to files, and checks for compliance with the policy).

I'm sure the Krazy licensing check could be modified to check for this.

> I think we have to define "library in kdelibs" a bit better. What
> about "library with a public API which is part of the KDE Developer
> Platform (i.e. in the SVN modules kdesupport, kdelibs or
> kdepimlibs)"? Should we add public libraries of other modules here as
> well?

Yes, I think this is a good idea, but we should mention that kdepimlibs 
has an exception rule (-gpl suffix for libraries given a special 
exemption - see the POLICIES doc in kdepimlibs).

> > - LGPL as listed in kdelibs/COPYING.LIB versions 2, 2.1, 3 and
> > later versions approved by KDE e.V. (or a simple version 2 or
> > later)
>
> It's a bit unclear to me what that's supposed to mean. Would that
> mean that code has to be licensed under one of version 2, 2.1, 3 or
> another KDE e.V. approved version? Or would it mean that code has to
> be multiply licensed under all of these versions?

This should be a quote.  Basically, your header should say:

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU Library 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 you can just put "either version 2 of the License, or (at your 
option) and later version".

> We should probably also ask us the question, if we want to phase out
> (L)GPL version 2 and go for version 3 (or later) only. I guess this
> is more a political question than a legal one, but other projects go
> this road, so for us it's at least an option.

I think we should wait for TT to make a move before we think about that.  
If they go v3 only, there's not much point requiring v2 to be an 
option.

> > 6 Documentation must be licensed
> > under the FDL as listed in kdelibs/COPYING-DOCS versions 1.2 and
> > later versions approved by KDE e.V. with no Invariant Sections, no
> > Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. It may also be licensed
> > under any of the above licences. (or a simple version 1.2 or later)
>
> What does "any of the above licenses" mean? And again the question,
> are these licenses, which are meant for code, appropriate for
> documentation?

I assume GPL/MIT/LGPL/BSD etc.  But that should be made clear.

Alex



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