[IAEP] 3 questions about Sugar Desktop Copyleft

[Dave Crossland]

On 20 April 2016 at 10:15, Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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).


When you import a GPL licensed python module, your entire program is
required to comply with the GPL.


> Each Activity is an independent work and can be licensed as the author
> desires.


If everything it imports is LGPL, I agree.


> 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.
>

Why not just have Sugar under GPL, then?


> 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),


Hmm. I thought Scratch became libre when Apple released its parts under
Apache, which predated Sugar?


> 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.
>

I understand that in 2016, Scratch has faded away, and Pharo has taken over
active development. I saw they rewrote all the Apache parts.

-- 
Cheers
Dave
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