widelands-dev team mailing list archive

[Teppo Maenpaa <teppo.maenpaa@xxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Aug 04, 2013 at 03:25:33PM -0000, Steven De Herdt wrote:

> Also, do I have to officialy claim that the code I contribute is licensed to Widelands, and hence the world, under GPL2+?  Or is this the implicit understanding?

Hi,

I am not a lawyer, but could not resist replying anyway..

Basically, what I think is that you got the copy because of GPL, and can only 
redistribute under GPL, and therefore I think that it is not necessary for 
you to explicitly state that your modifications are GPL licensed, too.

I always thought that Widelands was distributed under GPL v.2. Now I am 
reading from the above that we would be relicensing under GPL v2+. 
There are some remarks regarding relicensing at http://gplv3.fsf.org/dd3-faq

If I read right between lines: 
If there is GPL v2 only code at widelands, and we have not 
communicated with its author, then those factions, and therefore Widelands, 
could not be licensed under GPL v3+, for example. If WL was entirely under 
GPL v2+, then it could (assuming that dependency libraries would not bring 
problems). It might be better to make note that fractions are licensed by GPL 
v.2 only while others are v2+.

Please keep in mind, that I am not an expert here. It would be nice to keep 
the legal issues in order. If there are plans to change the license, then 
whoever pushes it could be more verbose.

If you want to distribute your contribution under GPL v2+ while the project 
stays at v.2, I do not know what would be best way to communicate that.

I accidentally deleted few mails some hours ago. If somebody already 
commented this, then please accept my apologies.

Regards,


	Teppo