[Sugar-devel] Licensing of the javascript libraries

[Daniel Narvaez]

We really need to make a call here, we start to have a sizeable amount of
code and the first release is near. I tend to think gplv2 is not an option
because of the apache incompatibility. I would go for Apache if we want to
avoid issues with anti-tivoization, otherwise gplv3.

To point out a concrete problem we could have with gpl3... My understanding
is that you could not ship an activity based on sugar-web in the apple
store, at least including the lib locally. I suppose it would be fine if
you loaded it from a server, but then you need security restrictions if you
implement any kind of system integration.

On Friday, 3 May 2013, Daniel Narvaez wrote:

> Hello,
>
> we need to decide how to license the new javascript libraries. I am mostly
> clueless about the topic and I'm honestly scared to start this thread,
> please be gentle :)
>
> Following is the rationale I came up with for Agora. I think it probably
> applies to the sugar-html libraries too. Feedback would be very welcome as
> we are no expert.
>
> ---
>
> I spent some time trying to decide which license is better for the various
> part of Agora. It's an hard and important decision, I'm not a lawyer and
> not even an expert but we need to make a call. My understanding is that a
> license is better than nothing.
>
> (L)GPLv2
>
> * Copyleft. Requires all the modifications to be made freely available.
> * Incompatible with Apache. Pretty bad, a lot of code already licensed
> that way and growing fast (especially in the javascript world).
>
> (L)GPLv3
>
> * Copyleft
> * Compatiible with Apache.
> * Anti-tivoization clause. Mixed bag, would it prevent us to run on
> hardware we are interested in? One problematic case I can think of is
> distributing an activity through the Apple store. We wouldn't be able to do
> that. Though people could still install the activity as a web app, from the
> browser. Maybe that's good enough?
> * Latest version. Better wording etc. Patents protection.
> * We can distribute the sugar icons under LGPLv3, without requiring any
> relicensing, because of the "or later" clause.
> * My understanding is that if xi-* is LGPL, proprietary applications could
> still use it without making modifications. The situation is not as clear as
> for the traditional linked libraries case but from
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-java.html I'd think we are fine.
>
> Apache
>
> * Non copyleft. It would be more friendly to companies that might want to
> reuse code in their products. But is that likely to happen? Both xi and
> omega are pretty agora specific. Still I think it's a good license to use
> for more generic bits that we might develop (I used it for some python
> helpers I'm using in eta for example).
> * It seems to be the best permissive license because of the patents
> protection. It's the most popular at least.
>
> So I think there two choices basically:
>
> 1 Copyleft VS non copyleft. I think copyleft has advantages and
> practically no real disadvantages for eta, xi and omega.
>
> 2 GPLv2 VS GPLv3. Compatibility with Apache would be good (maybe not
> essential though? We could still use apache libraries I would think, just
> not freely cut/paste code). Anti-tivoization is tricky, I honestly can't
> make strong points one way or another. While I was initially sympathetic
> with the claims that v3 is political I think
> http://tieguy.org/blog/2007/06/28/gpl-v3-the-qa-part-4-odds-and-ends/ is
> a good rebuttal of that argument. I'm somewhat worried about not being able
> to distribute on some devices but, especially since we can always run
> remotely, I'm not convinced we should opt out of v3 because of that.,
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez
>


-- 
Daniel Narvaez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/attachments/20130608/e7f43da6/attachment.html>