Difference between revisions of "Projects/KDE Relicensing"

Revision as of 14:47, 23 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?

1. you checkout relicensecheck.pl from trunk/KDE/kdesdk/scripts
2. you run it on the file or directory in question
3. 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.
4. review the list of declared copyright holders in the file.
5. 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"

Current TODO List

• KDAB
• Tobias Koenig
• Matthew Woehlke
• Daniel Teske
• Dawit Alemayehu
• Alex Zepeda
• Thomas Leitner
• Lars Knoll
• Kevin Ottens
• 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

 
  59212 ingwa
  38032 bulygin
  32243 dfaure
  23647 sequitur
  19747 amantia
  18148 mutz
  17365 rdale
  17149 trueg
  15012 tokoe
  14218 lunakl
  11806 winterz
  10603 coolo
  10449 mbuesch
  10094 thorsen
   9339 arnorehn
   7424 rogowski
   7382 cies
   6177 gyurco
   6130 mlaurent
   5612 cramblitt
   5531 mrudolf
   5028 tilladam
   4605 kloecker
   4390 mkretz
   4327 waba
   4216 cschlaeg
   4159 burghard
   4152 johnflux
   3327 fredrik
   3154 gungl