[Marketing] [ANNOUNCE] Sugar Labs Licensing Referendum (non-binding)

[Luke Faraone]

Hi all,

Per the [SLOBs meeting in Montevideo][1] last month, I have sent out a
poll to all [Sugar Labs members][2].

The poll will arrive in a separate mail.

[1]: <http://meeting.sugarlabs.org/sugar-meeting/2011-05-08#i_2665773>
[2]: <http://bit.ly/sugarlabs-member-list>

## Poll information ##

This is a vote to determine the suggested license for future releases of
Sugar. This poll will run from right now until Wed Jun 29 2011 at
midnight UTC-4.

Old releases would of course remain under their own licenses. This
change is allowed because our code is licensed under the GNU General
Public License version 2 "or any later version".

It is proposed that we endorse a migration from our current license to
the GNU GPL version 3 "or any later version", which would mean that new
code written in Sugar would only be available under that license, and
that distributors of Sugar would have to comply with that license
version, rather than choosing either v3 or v2.

v3 has a number of important changes from v2, see below for more details.

Individual developers would have the option as to whether they wanted to
update the license of modules they maintain in Sugar.

** No maintainer would be _required_ by this resolution to change the
license on their subsystem. **

## About the GPL ##

The GNU General Public License, as published by the Free Software
Foundation, is the most [widely used][3] Free Software license. It
provides users several freedoms, and ensures distributors must ensure
those freedoms are made available.

[3]: <http://www.blackducksoftware.com/oss/licenses#top20>

The GPLv2 was published in 1991, and is the license used by projects
such as the Linux kernel.

 * Full text: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0-standalone.html>

The GPLv3 was first drafted in 2003, and published in 2007.

 * Full text: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0-standalone.html>
 * Quick guide: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html>
 * Why upgrade: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html>

## Sugar Labs membership ##

Any "significant and sustained" contributor to Sugar Labs is eligible
for membership. To apply for membership, please see
<http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/Members>. Applicants will not
be able to vote in this referendum, but will be eligible for future ones.

Please keep discussion of this vote on the IAEP mailing list. Issues
about voting should be addressed to members AT sugarlabs DOT org.

Thanks,

Luke Faraone
Sugar Labs, Systems
✉: luke at sugarlabs.org
I: lfaraone on irc.freenode.net

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