kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Javier Serrano <javier.serrano.pareja@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 4:36 AM, Cirilo Bernardo
<cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[ snip ]
> The only really tricky part comes from the 'v3' bit - according to the FSF
> the AGPLv3 is not compatible with GPL2, and not even compatible with
> GPLv3 but OK to mix with GPLv3 (whatever that means - I can already
> hear some lawyers laughing).

[ IANAL, please take the following as the opinion of a non-expert. ]

This is why the '+'  (i.e. the "or-later") in "GPL2+" is really
important. The KiCad sources are, to the best of my knowledge, GPL2+
(most) and GPL3+ (the P&S router). That means that the mix is
effectively GPL3+. SISL seems to be AGPL3+. I see no incompatibility
(see section 13 of both licenses), but mixing in AGPL3+ code is a step
in the "stronger copyleft" direction. This is a strategic decision to
be taken, IMHO by the project leader.

> Any thoughts on eventually having SISL as a dependency? What's the
> current status of licensing of KiCad source modules? I can remove
> the SISL dependency but this will cripple the IGES code by removing
> the ability to check the validity of some structures within an input file.

There is still the misleading COPYRIGHT.txt in the root of the KiCad
sources, which I think should just be removed. This is important, and
I hope it can be done before the stable release.

Cheers,

Javier