[Sugar-devel] Licensing of the javascript libraries

[Daniel Narvaez]

Yes I think it's very different because using GPLv2 would mean we can't use
Apache licensed libraries, which are a big percentage of available js
libraries.

On Saturday, 8 June 2013, Gonzalo Odiard wrote:

> We already had this discussion two years ago,
> is the situation with the javascript activities different to need
> start this discussion again?
>
> Gonzalo
>
> On 06/14/2011 05:42 PM, Luke Faraone wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Sorry for the late update; the reporting mechanism for our voting
> software temporarily broke.
>
> Summary: the winner was **GNU GPL version 3, or any later version**.
>
> ## Results Details ##
>
> 55 out of 217 eligible members voted, or a little more than ¼.
>
> The full results of this election ranked the candidates in order of
> preference (from most preferred to least preferred):
>
>  1. GNU GPL version 3, or any later version
>  2. GNU GPL version 2, or any later version
>  3. Don't know or don't care
>
>
> Each number in the table below shows how many times the candidate on the
> left beat the matching candidate on the top. The winner is on the top of
> the left column.
> 	v3 	v2 	DC
> v3 	-- 	34 	37
> v2 	21 	-- 	42
> DC 	18 	13 	--
>
> Based on a sheer count of 1st place votes, v3 received 49% of the vote,
> v2 received 29% of the vote, and the apathetic position received the
> remaining 22% of the vote.
>
> Full details (and alternative election method calculations) are visible
> at the Selectricity page linked in the original voting ticket email.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Luke FaraoneSugar Labs, Systems
> ✉: luke at sugarlabs.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'luke at sugarlabs.org');>
> I: lfaraone on irc.freenode.net
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 8:59 PM, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com<javascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 'dwnarvaez at gmail.com');>
> > wrote:
>
>> Well permission to double license really.
>>
>>
>> On Saturday, 8 June 2013, Daniel Narvaez wrote:
>>
>> Ugh one issue with Apache is that I think we would need to get permission
>> to relicense the svg icons under apache from all the people that
>> contributed to them. Do you think that will be possible?
>>
>> People that contributed but doesn't seem to be involved with the project
>> anymore.
>>
>> Eben Eliason
>> Marco Pesenti Gritti
>> Tomeu Vizoso
>>
>> Still around
>>
>> Scott Ananian
>> benzea
>> erikos
>> Martin Abente
>> Walter Bender
>> godiard
>> Manuel Quinones
>>
>> From the git log of the icons dir.
>>
>> On Saturday, 8 June 2013, Daniel Narvaez wrote:
>>
>> I'm still undecided really but since it's important to make a call soon,
>> my vote goes for Apache, both for sugar-web and for activities we develop.
>>
>> On Saturday, 8 June 2013, Daniel Narvaez wrote:
>>
>> 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 wi
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
>> 'Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org');>
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>>
>>
>

-- 
Daniel Narvaez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/sugar-devel/attachments/20130608/0a0d9adf/attachment.html>