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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Update to KDE Licence Policy
From:       Jonathan Riddell <jr () jriddell ! org>
Date:       2007-08-05 10:40:55
Message-ID: 20070805104055.GW31474 () muse ! 19inch ! net
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KDE's Licence Policy is out of date, not only with GPL 3 but also QPL
and FDL.

http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy

So I'd like to propose that we support GPL 3 and update the policy.
GPL 3 is a useful tool against two of the biggest threats against free
software, patents and DRM.  We should even have a formal policy
against software patents soon, and working towards GPL 3 would be
putting words into action.  

We also will find ourselves unable to use newer versions of our
dependencies very soon, libsmbclient comes to mind but others will
likely follow, and distributions will have a hard time having to
package two versions of the same library.

Of course we can't move staight to GPL 3, firstly Qt is GPL 2 only, so
we should ask the KDE Free Qt Foundation to discuss with Trolltech
moving Qt to GPL 2 or 3.  I'm unclear on the current status of
Trolltech licence changes but I know they plan changes so this could
be part of that move.

The other problem is much of our code is GPL 2 only (also LGPL 2 only,
but that doesn't matter as it can upgrade to GPL 2 or above).  So I
propose we change the our policy to say that all newly entered GPL
code must be "version 2 or 3 or later versions approved by KDE e.V.".
There will then be the task of chasing up as many GPL 2 only copyright
holders as possible and persuading them to change it to 2 or 3.

The changes to the licence policy would be, drop allowing QPL, I
expect Trolltech will drop this licence altogether at some point.
Change GPL to "2, 3 or later approved by e.V.".  Change LGPL to "2,
2.1, 3 or later versions approved by KDE e.V."  Finally require all
documentation to be under the GNU FDL 1.2 or later versions approved
by KDE e.V., requiring FDL is already unwritten policy as far as I can
tell.  Documentation can optionally also be under one of the
acceptable software licences.

Jonathan
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