kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Wayne Stambaugh <stambaughw@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/18/2015 6:48 AM, Mário Luzeiro wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
>>> Is there somewhere an overview of the used libraries / 3rd party software and their licenses? (for instance an list, >LibreOffice table or similar)
>> Would it be helpful to create a table for the internal documentation? If yes, how should the table look like and what kind of format should be used?
> 
> Related with this subject, in my branch with for the refactoring of 3D viewer, I started to make a list of sources I am using. Some are libraries, some "pick cherry" pieces of code, some are just inspiration from blog posts.
> Also, the propose was to try to list the licences and the ones I should ask about it to the authors.. and.. it will work as a "credits".
> http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~mrluzeiro/kicad/kicad_new3d-viewer/view/head:/3d-viewer/credits.txt
> 
> So maybe kicad is missing a table list something like that.. so someone can manage the licences used in the source code and enter in contact with authors too..
> One thing that I maybe change in my list was that instead of listen it by filename / authors contributions, I will swap by author / filenames because the same author appear in different files..


I'm thinking of something much simpler that that. A simple web page with
a table and a few brief paragraphs.  A table with two columns to
document the dependency licenses. One column would be a name with the
link to the build dependency (Boost, wxWidgets, etc.) and the second
column would be the name of the license with a link to the license page.
I would also include a paragraph about our source license and another
paragraph about the library and font exceptions as well. Anything beyond
that, I will leave that up to the library maintainers.

> 
> Mario
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Kicad-developers [kicad-developers-bounces+mrluzeiro=ua.pt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of "Torsten Hüter" [torstenhtr@xxxxxx]
> Sent: 18 November 2015 11:36
> To: KiCad Mailinglist
> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] Release - licenses and legal issues
> 
> Hi Wayne,
> 
> 
>>> Is there somewhere an overview of the used libraries / 3rd party software and their licenses? (for instance an list, >LibreOffice table or similar)
>>
>> No.
> 
> Would it be helpful to create a table for the internal documentation? If yes, how should the table look like and what kind of format should be used?
> 
>>> The push and shove router is covered by the GPLv3+. This means the whole KiCad package has to be released under the terms of >>the GPLv3 license, if you're including the P&S-router.
>>>
>>> However, all of the license files in kicad say 2+.
>>>
>>> However, the "About../License" tab shows the following text:
>>>
>>> "The complete KiCad EDA Suite is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or any later version"
>>>
>>> I would think this would be adequate but I have not asked the FSF. Do
>>> we actually have to do this or is the GPL2+ statement OK.
> 
> I'm not a lawyer but would say that it is a one-way road, you can't "downgrade" from GPL3+ to GPL2+ and
> the whole package has to be distributed under the terms of the GPL3+ license. You can find on slashdot.org an interesting discussion about this subject:
> 
> http://ask.slashdot.org/story/07/06/16/1818241/gplv2-and-gplv3-coexisting-in-the-same-project
> 
> Perhaps it makes sense to ask an (license) expert too.
> 
>> Is it directly derived or is it a clean room implementation? It doesn't
>> say anywhere that I could see that it is derived from the Hershey font.
>> If it's a clean room implementation than we could ask if it can be
>> re-licensed to be GPL compatible.
> 
> This is indeed a very good question. I've seen in the helpers/tools_to_build_newstroke-font/README.txt the following line:
> font_draft1.lib - old draft glyph library with the metrics from Hersheys Simplex
> So I'm guessing he has extended the Hershey font. Of course it could be that he has repainted all chars/symbols. Still then is the problem, that he has released the font under the terms of the CC-BY license.
> 
> Asking the original author is a very good idea.
> 
>> This would push back the stable release. How do you suggest we package
>> the fonts? Packaging them separately is going to be painful.
> 
> This is quite true, but only required if the font can't be relicensed to GPL. If the GPL is choosen, it would make sense to define a GPL font exception for the KiCAD suite - so that the font can be embedded into the user design without affecting the design license.
> 
> If the author does not agree, it could be necessary to seperate the font from the program. The "newstroke" font is contained in a header (helpers/tools_to_build_newstroke-font/newstroke_font.h). This is an array of strings, the format is relative simple - one way could be a reader, that parses this header at runtime - or put the strings into a separate file and parse them there.
> 
>> I like what the geda folks did. They basically give you permission to
>> modify the symbols for use in your designs but enforced the GPL if you
>> are going to provide libraries of files derived from the symbols. We
>> should make a similar statement about our libraries since they are GPL
>> licensed if no one objects.
> 
> Sounds like a good plan!
> It would be important to define a policy as well; any contributor has to agree with the terms of this license.
> I don't know if that's true for all parts of the library - last time I've seen some contributions with a different licenses.
> 
> Thanks,
> Torsten
> 
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