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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Relicensing another author's work
From:       Miriam Ruiz <little.miry () gmail ! com>
Date:       2009-06-12 7:00:31
Message-ID: 4671dd0c0906120000s30441e1dp58f797adebdd3fbd () mail ! gmail ! com
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2009/6/12 David C. Rankin <drankinatty@suddenlinkmail.com>:
> Raphael Kubo da Costa wrote:
>> 2009/5/23 Raphael Kubo da Costa <kubito@gmail.com>:
>>> Hi there,
>>>
>>> There's some code that was imported into Ark a few years ago
>>> (plugins/bk) that is licensed as GPLv2-only. We need the author to
>>> relicense it to comply to KDE's licensing policy, but he doesn't have
>>> SVN access. Is it enough to just ask him and say he OK'd it in the
>>> commit message? Do we need to do anything else so that the process
>>> looks as transparent as possible?
>>
>> I've been in contact with the author and after some exchanged e-mails
>> he said "I have heard from a KDE guy that there are plenty of
>> contributors to KDE who will not relicence their software GPL3 and
>> that's perfectly fine, it's only required for a very few projects. So
>> I won't do it either".
>>
>> After reading the licensing policy article in Techbase I felt
>> GPLv2-only code wasn't allowed. Is it perfectly fine or not? Does this
>> code need to be removed from the tree?
>>
>>>> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe <<
>>
>
> There should be no need for the relicensing -- period. gpl-v2 code is gpl code
> just as gpl-v3 code is gpl code. If code licensed under the original gpl is
> included in a gpl-v2 project, then there isn't any prohibition against
> licensing the entire new project under gpl-v2. Same with gpl-v2 code used in a
> gpl-v3 project licensed ultimately under a gpl-v3 license. It's a giant "who cares"

Keep in mind that GPL v2 only is NOT compatible with GPL v3 [1], and
you cannot link them in the same project. Of course, GPL v2 (or above)
is, as it can be relicensed under GPL v3 at the receiver's option, but
not GPL v2 only.

Greetings,
Miry

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility
 
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