[Sugar-devel] Licensing of the javascript libraries

[Walter Bender]

On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 7:58 PM, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com> 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?

I am happy to reach out to Marco, Tomeu and Eben.

-walter
>
> 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
>>>> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Daniel Narvaez
>>
>
>
> --
> Daniel Narvaez
>
>
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--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org