[IAEP] 3 questions about Sugar Desktop Copyleft

[Chris Leonard]

On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 9:47 AM, Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/FAQ#What_are_the_principles_that_guide_Sugar_Labs.3F
> says
>
> What are the principles that guide Sugar Labs?
>
> Sugar Labs subscribes to principle that learning thrives within a culture of
> freedom of expression, hence it has a natural affinity with the free
> software movement (Please see Principles page in this wiki
> https://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs#Principles for more details). The
> core Sugar platform has been developed under a GNU General Public License
> (GPL); individual activities may be under different licenses.
>
>
> That last sentence seems really weird to me, because as I understand the
> GPL, and I Am Not A Lawyer, then if Sugar is GPL, all Activities must be
> under GPL compatible libre software licenses.

Not necessarily.  An activity may be designed to run on in a Sugar
user interface, but that does not make it a derivative work of Sugar
itself (in which case it would inherit the license).  Each Activity is
an independent work and can be licensed as the author desires.  We
strongly encourage suitable licensing and attempt to use what leverage
we have (e.g. to host on ASLO or not) to nudge people in the path of
righteousness.

There have been occasions in the past where issues with other's
licensing terms arose (I'm vaguely recalling a kerfuffle about Scratch
terms a few years back), community (and inter-community) discussion
ensues, actions consistent with our principles are taken.  I think we
dropped Scratch hosting.  We used to host their L10n as well, but they
migrated to their own Pootle server.


cjl