kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 1:34 AM, Javier Serrano <
javier.serrano.pareja@xxxxxxxxx> 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.
>
>
The only real limitation is that if you're providing KiCad as a commercial
cloud service then a licensing agreement has to be negotiated with
SINTEF; this is not an issue for any KiCad user I know of and these
licenses must be obtained on a case-by-case basis anyway so they
are no concern of the KiCad project team, only of the operators who
may want to offer a cloud service. If anyone wants to do that and
doesn't want to negotiate a license then they can disable the compilation
of any IGES code, or if the code has been designed to operate without
the NURBS code then build without the SISL library. Even if you're using
KiCad in an internal cloud service you would not require a license since
you're not offering a commercial cloud service.

- Cirilo