Re: [Monotone-devel] GPLv3 code in monotone

[Stephen Leake]

Zack Weinberg <address@hidden> writes:

> On 2011-05-20 4:46 PM, Stephen Leake wrote:
>> GPLv3 was heavily reviewed before it was released, and has been out for
>> almost 4 years.
>>
>> Can you elaborate?
>>
>> I'm sure there are good reasons not to bother going to GPLv3, but I
>> don't understand what you mean by "premature".
>
> Switching to GPL3 would make us license-incompatible with a large body
> of code (everything under a copyleft that isn't v3-compatible, in
> particular, code under v2-only).  It would also make us
> license-compatible with a large body of code (anything that adds
> restrictions that are okay with v3 but not v2).
>
> It is my impression that the former body of code is much larger than
> the latter, and it is my opinion that we should not switch as long as
> that remains the case.

If everyone adopts this attitude, no one will ever switch to GPLv3. And
we would not be using GPLv2+ now; we'd be stuck with GPLv1.

Since we have benefited so much from the Gnu packages and the FSF
licenses, I think we have a duty to move to GPLv3, since it gives better
support for software freedom.

Free Software is a community effort; everyone has to do their part.

We only need to consider packages that we currently use, and those that
might be useful in the future for monotone. Using new packages seems a
remote possibility, since we are fairly mature.

So I think this deserves some more attention.

[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html gives a list of licenses
known to be compatible with GPL (3 is implied).

Actual licenses for packages we currently use (from
INSTALL_windows_native.text):

MinGW   a varied collection. c:/MinGW/doc/runtime/DISCLAIMER says the
        main runtime library is public domain. I'll assume GPLv3+, but
        it could be a lot of work to prove that (same amount of work to
        prove GPLv2+).

        On Linux, the runtime is mostly Gnu packages, which are GPLv3+
        compatible. So I'll assume GPLv3+ there as well.

        Getting a precise library dependency list from Depends.exe or
        ldd would be the next step to refine this.

Boost   Boost Software License (http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt).
        GPLv3+ compatible according to [1].

Lua     "MIT license", which is an overloaded name according to [1].
        http://www.lua.org/license.html is the same as the Boost
        license; GPLv3+ compatible.

pcre    University of Cambridge; similar to Boost; GPLv3+ compatible

botan   /MinGW/include/botan.h says "Botan license".
        http://botan.randombit.net/ says "BSD license".
        http://botan.randombit.net/license.html gives a license. This
        appears to be the "modified BSD license" mentioned on [1] (no
        "advertising clause"). GPLv3+ compatible.

sqlite3 /MinGW/include/sqlite3.h says "The author disclaims copyright".
        So it's public domain; GPLv3+ compatible.

libidn  Gnu package; GPLv3+ compatible.

libiconv    Gnu package; GPLv3+ compatible.

gettext Gnu package; GPLv3+ compatible.

libz    /MinGW/include/zlib.h gives a license similar to Boost; GPLv3+
        compatible

C++ runtime Gnu package; GPLv3+ compatible


So GPLv3+ is fine for the current set of packages.

What sort of package might we be using in the future?

--
-- Stephe