kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 3/26/2015 10:34 AM, Javier Serrano wrote:
> 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
> 

I think anyone who provides KiCad as a service should make the KiCad
source available.  It seems to me that the GPL2+ should cover that as
well since I'm guessing any service would be using a modified version of
the KiCad source directly.  However, I personally don't have an issue
with your description of the AGPL3+.  Does anyone else object to
including this is KiCad for licensing reasons?

As far as licensing compatibility and risk we are still bound by the
wxWidgets and Boost licenses so we will always have some licensing
unknowns as far as changes and legal validation even though they are
more permissive licenses.

Cheers,

Wayne