Re: Turning cvs2{svn,git} into cvs2hg

On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 6:18 AM, Michael Haggerty <[email protected]> wrote:
> Michael Haggerty wrote:
>> [...]
>> By the way, there is also a possible problem related to the license of
>> cvs2svn vs. those of the DVCSs.  IANAL but it seems to me that the
>> CollabNet license is *not* GPLv2-compatible.  Therefore it might not
>> even be possible to create a tight integration of cvs2svn and hg code.
>> It might be possible to get CollabNet to change the license that is
>> applied to cvs2svn (for example, I would certainly support a change to
>> GPLv2), but those discussions haven't even been started.
>
> Greg,
>
> I don't remember that you ever addressed this issue.  Before I start
> committing cvs2hg patches willy-nilly, can you please let us know why
> you think that we are on safe ground license-wise?

Oh crap.  I forgot all about that.  Having just read waaaay more of
the FSF's web site than I ever wanted to, I am guessing that this
clause:

  5. Products derived from this software may not use the "Tigris" name
  nor may "Tigris" appear in their names without prior written
  permission of CollabNet.

would cause problems.  (For example, the FSF site says the Apache
License 1.1 is GPL-incompatible because of "strong prohibitions on the
use of Apache-related names".)

> Or if not, then we should see whether we can convince CollabNet to
> change the cvs2svn license, for example to GPLv2 (I haven't yet pursued
> this).  See this thread for more info:

Personally, I try to avoid the whole issue by using the X11 license
(or, equivalently, the modified BSD license) whenever I get around to
releasing code publicly.  That seems to be the only way for both
GPL-lovers and GPL-haters to accept your code.  (Sigh.)

But hey, yeah, whatever CollabNet would go for.  I don't really care.
I would like for you to accept my patches so that Mercurial is a
first-class citizen in the next release of the-increasingly-misnamed
cvs2svn, but I don't think there's much I can do apart from write good
code.

Greg

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