kicad-developers team mailing list archive

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

I forgot to link to an initiative from FSFE for those interested in best
practices for documenting the licence of Free and Open Source projects:

https://reuse.software/

Cheers,

Javier

On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 12:02 PM, Javier Serrano <
javier.serrano.pareja@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Steve, some comments inlined below:
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018 at 4:13 PM, Steven A. Falco <stevenfalco@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>> I'm packaging KiCad for Fedora.  The web page:
>> http://kicad-pcb.org/about/licenses/ states that KiCad is GPLv3 or
>> greater.  Yet, the source files (for example eeschema/edit_bitmap.cpp)
>> still say GPLv2 or greater.
>>
>
> Some source files are GPL2-or-later (aka "GPL2+"), some others (e.g. the
> P&S router) are GPL3-or-later (aka "GPL3+"). With a GPL2+ header you are
> telling the licensee (s)he is free to take a given file as GPL2 or any
> later version, which at this point in time can only mean GPL3. With a GPL3+
> header you are telling licensees they can take the file as GPL3 and, in the
> future, if it ever exists, GPL4 and so on. Because GPL3 files cannot
> coexist with GPL2 files in the same project, the only way for legally
> distributing the whole project is to interpret GPL2+ files as released
> under GPL3, a permission which the copyright holder explicitly granted by
> including the "or later". This is what is meant by "GPL3" when describing
> the licensing regime of the whole project.
>
>
>>
>> I know it is a huge hassle to go through all the source files and update
>> them to say GPLv3 or greater, but that probably should be done if GPLv3 is
>> truly the intent.
>>
>>
> Going through that process is not needed for the reasons I exposed
> earlier. It is also quite impractical, because the only person allowed to
> change a copyright and licensing header in a given file is the copyright
> owner, and that, for KiCad, means a lot of people, some of whom might even
> be hard to reach today.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Javier
>