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List:       kde-commits
Subject:    Re: KDE/kdevplatform/language
From:       Jakob Petsovits <jpetso () gmx ! at>
Date:       2009-05-22 11:17:45
Message-ID: 200905221317.48183.jpetso () gmx ! at
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On Thursday 21 May 2009, Killerfox wrote:
> On Thursday 21 May 2009 01:06:00 pm Jakob Petsovits wrote:
> > >  A             codegen/licenses/GPL v1
> >
> > (...)
> >
> > Er, really? GPL v1? I thought that one is long obsolete and replaced by
> > v2 in pretty much all cases. Are you sure this is suitable for shipping
> > by default?
>
> Well technically v2 is obsolete as well, replaced by v3. However a lot of
> software still uses it. I don't think there is an issue with providing it,
> in the end it is the user's choice.

That's not quite the same though. v3 is not only an update but also comes with 
a set of new restrictions (the DRM stuff) which caused a "philosophical" issue 
with the v2→v3 migration. On the other hand, the v1→v2 migration was 
uncontroversial and happened a long time ago (1991?), so you'll hardly find 
*any* projects anymore using v1, or anyone still suggesting it as a license.

Of course it's the user's choice, but then again the user could also choose to 
use CDDL (which is in fact an improved Mozilla license, so maybe it should 
replace the MPL in this set), Affero GPL, CC-SA, Artistic, Eclipse Public 
License, IBM Public License, Microsoft Public License, plain public domain, 
PHP or Perl licenses, WTFPL, or whatever licenses are out there.

I think the default choice should be a sensible, well-selected set of most 
commonly used and widely accepted licenses. That is true for GPL v2 *and* v3, 
but certainly not for GPL v1.

Also, any specific reason why Apache v1 is included instead of the improved and 
GPL-compatible v2? Where is LGPL v3? And what makes the Boost license special 
that it is included as only project-specific license in the set? Isn't the 
official name for the MIT license "MIT X11" (because there are other MIT 
licenses too)?

I don't want to sound harsh (in fact, having a few licenses for pre-selection 
does rock) but the imported selection looks a bit random to me. If it is 
actually intended for guiding the user to an appropriate license, I think the 
current choice is not yet an ideal one.

Best regards,
  Jakob


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