[Sugar-devel] Licensing of the javascript libraries

[Daniel Narvaez]

I'm actually a bit confused about the result of the one year ago
discussion. I thought we decided to stay with gplv2 but the poll winner
seems to be gplv3?

Anyway even on gplv3 I think the situation is pretty different if nothing
else because one of major goals of the web activities work is to bring
activities on devices where tivoization might be an issue.

On Saturday, 8 June 2013, Daniel Narvaez wrote:

> 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
>> I: lfaraone on irc.freenode.net
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 8:59 PM, Daniel Narvaez <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
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez
>
>

-- 
Daniel Narvaez
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