The oversight board is considering a motion to upgrade the license of Sugar from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv3 or later". Before proceeding to a vote, we'd like to request feedback from the community. In particular, we'd like to know how this change might affect you as a Sugar end-user, distributor, contributor or maintainer.
Free Software licensing is a complex topic. To keep the level of the discussion high, please contribute to this thread only after making a small effort to inform yourself. == Questions & Answers == Q: what's the benefit of upgrading to the GPLv3? A: The full rationale for the GPLv3 is provided here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.html Q: Do we need to ask the permission of all copyright holders? A: No, we'll take advantage of the "or any later version" clause in the current license. We're not retroactively re-licensing existing code. Q: How is the actual license change done? A: We need to replace the COPYING file in the source code and update the headers of all source files. This operation can easily be automated. Q: What if the maintainer of a module wants to keep the GPLv2 or later? A: This is is perfectly acceptable, but the combined work comprising GPLv2 and GPLv3 modules would fall under the GPLv3. Q: Are there license compatibility problems with GNOME, Python or other libraries we depend on? A: To the best of our knowledge, all Sugar dependencies are compatible with the GPLv3. Q: When will the change happen? A: We're looking at the 0.94 release cycle. Maintainers of individual activities and non-core projects can update their license at any time, or not at all. Q: What about sugar-toolkit, which is LGPLv2+? A: Following the path of least resistance, every LGPLv2+ module will be upgraded to the LGPLv3+. Q: How will the GPLv3+ affect anti-theft systems? A: As long as end-users can request and receive developer keys, the Bitfrost anti-theft system is compatible with the anti-tivoization clause of the GPLv3. Q: How will the GPLv3+ affect OLPC deployments? A: Sugar will simply add a few more GPLv3 packages to the ones already present in Fedora, so there is no real difference here -- The deployments are *already* using GPLv3 software today. -- Bernie Innocenti Sugar Labs Infrastructure Team http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Infrastructure_Team _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep