[kforge-dev] Re: licence for kforge code

Sun Apr 24 09:22:54 UTC 2005

John Bywater wrote:
> Rufus Pollock wrote:
>>
>> One thing I have failed to bring up so far in detail is what 
>> licence the code we are producing should be put under. Currently the 
>> GForge code is under a GPL licence but it is unclear what constraints 
>> that places on us (particularly as we are looking to replace sections 
>> of that as time goes by).
> 
> I think it probably means, rightly, that we are bound to release stuff 
> we use it for with GPL. But your own oringinal, standalone code is up to 
> you to license as you choose. For my part, the ASF has Free Software 
> written into its objects, so in a strictly formal (non-binding) sense, 
> I'm obliged to suggest we license as GPL.
> 
>> As I see it there are 3 options:
>>
>>   1. GPL
>>   2. An Apache/BSD style licence (you can close ...)
>>   3. MySQL route of having GPL but also keeping a normal unlicensed 
>> version that you can sell to people who don't want to have the GPL 
>> (maybe useful in the distant future ....?)
>>
>> My current view is that i would like either 1 or 3 and would imagine 
>> that 1 would be easier to manage legally, particularly if we have 
>> increased contributions from other people. Let me know what you think.
> 
> I'd prefer 1, given the system we are deriving from is GPL, and we don't 
> have a business plan for selling licenses, so that's probably a sideshow 
> that we should just forget about in order to keep things as simple as 
> possible.

Agree totally.

> But I did make a wiki page for this concern here:
> 
> http://www.okfn.org/kforge/wiki/LicensePolicy
> 
> I'm just writing the Python 'kforge' module distutils stuff, to have a 
> COPYRIGHT and LICENSE file, etc.
> 
> It would be better, if we can, to decide the licensing sooner rather 
> than later. Of course, it's your decision!! ;-)

I think, subject to comments from others that we should go down the pure 
GPL route.

> Another issue is the name of the copyright: individual authors, or 
> organisation names? Given we want to credit contributions from others, 
> perhaps we should list names of individual authors of all significant 
> contributions, in addition to the copyright of the GForge code?
> 
> I made a wiki page for this concern here:
> 
> http://www.okfn.org/kforge/wiki/CopyrightRecord

My suggestion is that we should put the copyright under the name of the 
Open Knowledge Foundation initially and add other groups as necessary 
(how does this work on other projects ...?). Of course there should 
always be a credits file that lists /all/ contributors.

Regards,

Rufus