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

[Michael J Rubinsky]

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

> Am Montag, 29. August 2011, 18:59:48 schrieb 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.
> Good to hear
>
>> >> 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 the GPL (but is no longer maintained by the original author - it was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?
>
> Yes, these are three separate issues:

Ok. Well, to add my votes then:

>
> * Shipping license files at all (I think jan has voted for it and it would
> help me, too)

+1. Shipping license files OR linking to locally hosted versions are  
both fine with me. If it helps downstream packagers, then shipping  
them makes sense.


> * Ambiguous links and codes for GPL and LGPL versions in files and metadata
> * outdated versions of the GPL2/LPGL-2.1 files shipped with H3 files
>
> In fact I only know of Horde_Ldap as explicitly labeled LGPL-3.0. The rest is
> just defaulting to the most recent GPL/LGPL link (though some are fixed by
> now).

> If there is a decision in any direction I'd volunteer some time to get at
> least framework/* and the released apps straight. I guess it's biting me more
> than most others involved.

My vote would be to make any code not explicitly labeled version 3 to  
be released as version 2. Even for version 3 released code, I'd  
investigate why the decision was made to make it 3. In the case of  
Horde_Ldap, there are lots of authors listed, so it might not have  
been our decision(?).

-- 
mike

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