kicad-developers team mailing list archive

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

On Thu, Mar 26, 2015 at 10:09 PM, Cirilo Bernardo
<cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 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;

No, I don't think this is correct. The AGPL, as the GPL, imposes
absolutely no limitation on whether you can use code licensed under it
for commercial or other purposes. If it did, it would not be a free
license. What SINTEF is saying is the following: "here's a piece of
code you can use if you respect the terms of the AGPL. If you don't
want to respect them, we can allow you to do that in exchange of
money." That's a completely different statement. Everybody is fully
free to commercially use the code. You can even do so in two ways:
respecting the AGPL or striking a private deal with SINTEF to avoid
compliance with AGPL if you so wish. Here's another angle to it: the
AGPL gives you freedoms, the famous 4 freedoms of free software. There
is nothing SINTEF or anybody can do to take away those freedoms from
you. There is no "undo" for publishing files under the AGPL. Same goes
for the GPL.

To come back to your statement, it would be more correct if it said
"The only real limitation is that if you're providing KiCad as a
commercial cloud service and do not want to comply with the AGPL
terms, then a licensing agreement has to be negotiated with SINTEF."
But we could say the same thing about every KiCad source file. If
somebody wanted to use some of your GPL2+ licensed files and not
comply with GPL2+, the only way they would have to do so is to discuss
with you, because as the copyright holder you are the only one who has
the right to modify the file and use another license header for that
modified version.

Cheers,

Javier