Guidelines and HOWTOs/Relicensing/KDE Relicensing: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 10:23, 14 November 2007

KDE GPL v2.0 Relicensing effort

Why does it matter ?

A couple of KDE dependent projects or even libraries have moved or are going to move to GPLv3 (State of GPLv3 movement).

Unfortunately, GPL v3 is incompatible with GPL v2. This means that it is not possible to create a project linking GPL v2 and v3 code together. There is no problem for projects which are licensed GPLv2+ (version 2 or above).

A few parts of KDE are currently licensed as GPLv2 only. So far we have no reason to believe that this was something other than an oversight. However, we still need to validate with the individual copyright holders that a relicense to GPLv2+ or GPLv2+v3 is okay with them.

Therefore, in an effort we're trying to identify the contributors that have contributed under the terms of GPLv2 and where the "+" part was not explicetly mentioned. If we know that all contributors agreed to a relicense, we can go ahead and flip the license of the individual source file.

How can I help ?

By identifying a contributor who as contributed under the terms of GPLv2 (use kdesdk/scripts/relicensecheck.pl on the file in question or the Relicense Status Page), and contacting him if he wasn't already contacted. Ask him the following questions:

Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under GPLv2 to GPLv2+?

Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under GPLv2 to GPLv2 or GPLv3 ?

Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under LGPLv2 to LGPLv2+?

Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under LGPLv2 to LGPLv2 or LGPLv3?

Are you okay with the KDE e.V. deciding on a future licensing change to your code, should that be necessary?

Whats next?

you checkout relicensecheck.pl from trunk/KDE/kdesdk/scripts
you run it on the file or directory in question
you interpret the result. check each commit that is being complained about carefully. Try to get the copyright's holder's permission. if you get it, update the whitelist in the script.
review the list of declared copyright holders in the file.
if you're all clear, change the license to the most liberal license possible. Document your change verbosely in the SVN commit log.

Current Reply List

Please keep the list sorted by family name!
Please only use "YES" or "NO"

Name	GPLv2->GPLv2+	LGPLv2 -> LGPLv2+	GPLv2 -> GPLv2+v3	LGPLv2 -> LGPLv2+LGPLv3	KDE e.V. decides
Adam, Till	YES	YES	YES	YES	NO
Bastian, Waldo	NO	NO	YES	YES	YES
Boemann, Casper	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Broadstone, Matt	NO	NO	YES	YES	YES
Cullmann, Christoph	NO	NO	YES	YES	NO
Drummond, Craig	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Dymo, Alexander	YES	YES	YES	YES	NO
Faure, David	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Granroth, Kurt	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Herden, Jens	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Hoeglund, Fredrik	NO	NO	YES	YES
Kainhofer, Reinhold	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Kellet, Alexander	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Knight, Robert	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Kretz, Matthias	NO	NO	YES	YES	NO
Kulow, Stephan	YES	YES	YES	YES	NO
Lunak, Lubos	YES	YES	YES	YES	NO
Mac-Vicar, Duncan	YES	YES	YES	YES	NO
Macieira, Thiago	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Mantia, Andras	NO	NO	YES	YES	YES
Martyn, Greg	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Molkentin, Daniel	YES	YES	YES	YES	NO
Montel, Laurent	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Moore, Richard	NO	NO	YES	YES	YES
Mueller, Dirk	YES	YES	YES	YES	NO
Mutz, Marc	YES	YES	NO	NO	NO
Riddell, Jonathan	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Sand, Espen	YES	YES			YES
Schlaeger, Chris	NO	NO	YES	YES	NO
Seigo, Aaron	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Stephenson, Will	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Tapsell, John	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Trueg, Sebastian (Exception: K3b)	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Wolfer, Urs	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES

Current TODO List

KDAB
Tobias Koenig
Matthew Woehlke
Daniel Teske
Dawit Alemayehu
Alex Zepeda
Thomas Leitner
Lars Knoll
Kevin Ottens
Simon Hausmann
Maksim Orlovich
Sirtaj Singh Kang
Karol Szwed
Thorsten Roeder
Joseph Wenninger

Current list of problematic Files

Tom Albers has written a webfrontend to relicensecheck.pl, which makes it really easy to find files that can already be relicensed, or for those that can not it is possible to easily see (via tooltip) which commits are preventing it.

Visit the Relicensing Status Page

Current top 30 of possible contributors to GPLv2-only files

  23647 sequitur
  20801 gerken
  20659 craig
  17365 rdale
  17080 tokoe
  15023 dfaure
  13945 lunakl
   9339 arnorehn
   8703 thorsen
   8273 coolo
   7458 cies
   7448 mutlaqja
   7424 rogowski
   6018 gyurco
   5692 djurban
   5531 mrudolf
   5525 aacid
   5446 ogoffart
   5299 mkretz
   5245 winterz
   4216 cschlaeg
   4152 johnflux
   3652 waba
   3327 fredrik
   3138 chehrlic
   2944 mlaurent
   2916 teske
   2661 kniederk
   2614 martyn
   2484 lypanov

@@ Line 13: / Line 13: @@
 == How can I help ? ==
-By identifying a contributor who as contributed under the terms of GPLv2 (use '''kdesdk/scripts/relicensecheck.pl''' on the file in question or the Relivense Status Page (see below)), and contacting him if he wasn't already contacted. Ask him the following questions:
+By identifying a contributor who as contributed under the terms of GPLv2 (use '''kdesdk/scripts/relicensecheck.pl''' on the file in question or the [http://toma.kovoks.nl/kde/ Relicense Status Page]), and contacting him if he wasn't already contacted. Ask him the following questions:
 * Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under GPLv2 to GPLv2+?