[Sugar-devel] Licensing of the javascript libraries

Sebastian Silva sebastian at fuentelibre.org
Fri Jun 7 21:14:42 EDT 2013


Hi,
The poll winner was GPLv3 but the poll was "non-binding", i.e. the 
community can't force contributors to switch licenses and nobody sent a 
patch to change license notices.

I and other members of the community think it's important to support 
freedom by using copyleft, therefore most of our contributions are using 
GPLv3.

I checked and it turns out Apache 2.0 license is compatible with GPLv3 
(but incompatible with GPLv2):
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#apache2

Regards,
Sebastian

El 07/06/13 19:38, Daniel Narvaez escribió:
> 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 suggestedlicense  for future releases
>         > ofSugar. 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 Faraone
>         Sugar  Labs, Systems
>         âoe0/00:luke at sugarlabs.org
>         I: lfaraone onirc.freenode.net  <http://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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