[dev] Horde library license headers (notices from SUSE Legal) - please advise

[Michael J Rubinsky]

Quoting Ralf Lang <lang at b1-systems.de>:

>> Sorry. I've been on vacation for the last week and have been pretty
>> much out of touch with no connectivity. I don't have time to get
>> caught up on all the backlog of email before this hurricane hits us,
>> but am trying to answer the more pressing emails before we get hit
>> with this storm.
>
> Hope you get through it without any damages. News sounds horrible.

Thanks. We came through with relatively little damage. It could have  
been a lot worse.

>
>> When I more-or-less took over maintaining Ansel, the Exifer code was
>> already incorporated into Ansel. The original code was released under
>> the GPL (but is no longer maintained by the original author - it was
>> adopted by zenphoto.org, still under the GPL). This is why the notice
>> appears in the Ansel CREDITS doc. This should probably be moved
>> somewhere more appropriate - maybe
>> http://wiki.horde.org/Doc/Dev/CopyrightLicense ?
>>
>> Likewise, when I started maintaining Horde_Image, it was already
>> released under the LGPL. For Horde 4, I moved the Exifer code to
>> Horde_Image, where I thought it really belonged, but failed to notice
>> the licensing discrepancy.
>>
>> Personally, I don't like the LGPL, but as I said above, Horde_Image
>> was already licensed that way when I started work on it. So, suffice
>> to say, I wouldn't mind if, going forward, it is released as GPL.
>> Though I have to admit I don't know enough about licensing changes to
>> know if this is possible.
>>
>> OTOH, The Exifer code in question is only one of a few possible
>> drivers for working with EXIF data, so theoretically, one could not
>> include it if it is being used in a way that violates the GPL
>> licensing. OTOOH, the orginal author did give us permission to
>> incorporate it into Horde - though he is no longer the maintainer.
>
> I think as long as the authors of the Horde_Image code agree, there's nothing
> stopping you from licensing it as GPL. On the other hand, if the library is
> LGPL and uses GPL code, this should also be no problem by itself. Users just
> need to know that GPL parts are included.

At the very least, I would like this to be released under either LGPL  
2.1 or GPL 2. My guess is that these links are just outdated, i.e.,  
they were never updated to point to the older license when the newer  
version 3 licenses were released. I don't recall any discussion as a  
group on moving to any of the version 3 gnu licenses. There are other  
examples of this in our code, mostly in older libraries.

We should decide on this as part of the process of updating the  
copyright/license headers to point to a local copy of the license  
used. I believe that was another thread we were discussing, correct?

-- 
mike

The Horde Project (www.horde.org)
mrubinsk at horde.org