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Re: thoughts on dependency on SISL library

 

On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 1:56 PM, Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Mixing licenses is always tricky business.  You risk licensing yourself
> into a corner.  I am not an expert on licensing and I would never
> pretend otherwise.  That being said, if the AGPLv3 license prevents us
> from using the SISL source for cloud services as others have suggested
> then I cannot not accept that.  I think making KiCad into some type of
> collaborative online service like google docs would be something that is
> worthwhile.  If this is not the case, then I have less of an issue.

My understanding about the AGPL3+ thing: it looks to me like the only
effect (which is significant and therefore needs to be officially
decided) would be that it would be illegal to provide KiCad as a
service (i.e. running in some server instead of in the local host of
the user) *without* providing access to the KiCad sources as well. I
personally don't see anything wrong with that in principle. There
might also be complications of some kind in the future arising from
the fact that we would then need to keep an eye not only on future
versions of the GPL but also on future versions of the AGPL. And there
is also some difficult-to-evaluate risk in the fact that AGPL is a
much less used license than GPL, so much less challenged and proven as
well.

Cheers,

Javier


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