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[Locked] Again license issue on mail plugin
Page : 1 2
Guest English 22 Tofe [Read]
16 February 2009 à 11:25

Guest, Sunday 07 December 2008 à 15:42

Hello.

Today I tried rev1429 (on Fedora rawhide cairo-dock is upgraded to rev1429)
and I noticed that on plug-ins/configure.ac, "mail" plugin was enabled
by default.

As said before while cairo-dock itself is under GPLv3+ (version 3 and any
later), plug-ins/mail tree is under GPLv2 (version 2 only). These two
licenses are incompatible (ref:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#GPL_Compatibility_Matrix )

If you want to ship mail plugin on the next stable release, would
you resolve the license issue on mail plugin (i.e. ask mail plugin
developer to relicense mail plugin to GPLv2+ or so)? Otherwise I cannot
ship mail plugin on Fedora.

mtasaka, Sunday 07 December 2008 à 15:51


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
The above message is from me (I forgot to login...)

Tofe, Sunday 07 December 2008 à 19:52


Subscription date : 09 February 2008
Messages : 921
Oh, sorry, I didn't remember that issue. I'll ask Brian Tarricone if that is possible or not. Indeed the backend part of this plugin uses some code from the xfce-mail-plugin of Xfce...
Therefore a question: Isn't Xfce (and the panel plus its plugins, like the mail plugin) shipped with Fedora ?

mtasaka, Monday 08 December 2008 à 04:21


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
Well, probably you are referring to xfce mailwatch plugin
http://spuriousinterrupt.org/projects/mailwatch ?
(in Fedora this is called as "xfce4-mailwatch-plugin").

If so, this is also under GPLv2 (version 2 only). However
for this case there exists no problem because (as far as I checked
quickly) the packages which this mailwatch plugin depends on
are licensed under LGPLv2+, GPLv2+ or so (i.e. compatible with
GPLv2).

The problem is that cairo-dock is licensed under GPLv3+, which
is not compatible with GPLv2.

Tofe, Monday 08 December 2008 à 08:14


Subscription date : 09 February 2008
Messages : 921
Oh.

fabounet, Monday 08 December 2008 à 14:03


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
we can include any GPL2 code in our program right ? so I don't see the problem.

mtasaka, Monday 08 December 2008 à 16:12


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
> we can include any GPL2 code in our program right ? so I don't see the problem

No (as I said).
GPLv2+ (version 2 and any later) is okay, but GPLv2 (version 2 only)
conflicts with GPLv3+ (version 3 and any later) codes.

Note that here autotools related files (like Makefile.am, intltool-XXXXX.in
configure.ac or so) are not regarded as "sources", so these "non-source" files
can be under GPLv2.

And also note that if the source code shows that it is licensed under GPL
but does not mention about its version, it is regarded as being licensed under
GPL at any version (i.e. currently 1 or 2 or 3). Please check the section 9
of the GPLv2 license text. That means, only putting GPLv2 license text
in the source tarball does not mean that the source codes in the tarball
are licensed under GPLv2.

fabounet, Monday 08 December 2008 à 16:35


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
I thought that you can use GPL code provided you show the modifications you made to it, and the author.

mtasaka, Monday 08 December 2008 à 17:29


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
The problem is not there. The problem is that GPL has the term which has
what Japanese people calls as "GPL pollution" effect.

From GPLv2 text section 2:
[QUOTE]
But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
[/QUOTE]
That is, if one of the codes uses GPLv2, all the codes which uses
the code or which are used by the code must also be (or be compatible with)
GPLv2, which looks as if GPLv2 license in one code pollutes the licenses
of other codes, and this applies to GPLv3.

fabounet, Monday 08 December 2008 à 17:41


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program

we don't distribute the same sections, we just took some part of it, and integrated it into our code.
plus, Cairo-Dock is not a work based on the xfce panel
so as I understand it, I'd say it's ok.

mtasaka, Monday 08 December 2008 à 17:46


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
So
> we just took some part of it
is already a problem.

mtasaka, Monday 08 December 2008 à 17:52


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
Some similar case:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=470696#c7

fabounet, Monday 08 December 2008 à 17:53


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
but then it's not "the same sections".
and again, we can't say that CD is "a whole which is a work based on the Program", right ?
anyway, the easiest way is maybe just to ask permission to the author to include some of his code into CD. I don't think he would make some difficulties.

mtasaka, Monday 08 December 2008 à 19:21


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
Again no.

2b) says not only the program which is based (in your sense) on the code but
the program which contains the code must be licensed under the same license as the whole.

fabounet, Tuesday 09 December 2008 à 09:34


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
well in this case the only solution is to ask the author, it may be enough no ?

mtasaka, Tuesday 09 December 2008 à 18:08


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
Yes. If the original developer agrees to relicense the code under GPLv2+
or so, the problem is solved.

Tofe, Thursday 11 December 2008 à 14:35


Subscription date : 09 February 2008
Messages : 921
Well, I just mailed Brian Tarricone, and... he is not very fond of GPL v3, nor is he of GPL v2+, and would like to keep his code under GPL v2.
Considering this position, what can we do in order to distribute the mail plugin ? Is it possible to distribute it under GPL v2 ?

mtasaka, Thursday 11 December 2008 à 15:53


Subscription date : 16 May 2008
Messages : 106
Well, the main problem is:
- Some files under plug-ins/mail/src are under GPLv2 (as I said).
Note that these files 'include' cairo-dock.h, which comes from
cairo-dock/src.
- Then cairo-dock/src/cairo-dock.h 'include's some other header files
and some of them are licensed under GPLv3+.
Here license conflict is happening.

So unless
- GPLv2 licensed files under plug-ins/mail/src are relicensed
to GPLv2+ or so
- or GPLv2 licensed files under plug-ins/mail/src are just removed
and alternative codes are written from scratch
- or GPLv3+ licensed files under cairo-dock/src/ (like cairo-dock-desklet.h)
are relicensed to GPL+ or GPLv2+ or so
mail plugin cannot be distributed with cairo-dock.

fabounet, Thursday 11 December 2008 à 16:22


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
so complicated ...
by the way you seem to know well about licenses, why everybody don't switch to GPLv3 ? isn't it supposed to be stronger and more up-to-date than the v2 ?

Tofe, Thursday 11 December 2008 à 17:16


Subscription date : 09 February 2008
Messages : 921
What if, structurally speaking, I manage to organize the code so that the code under GPL v2 doesn't include any header from cairo-dock ? Would the conflict still exist ?
Edit in fact it should be already the case, it is not normal that this low-level code relies on cairo-dock...

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Subjects Author Language Messages Last message
[Locked] Again license issue on mail plugin
Page : 1 2
Guest English 22 Tofe [Read]
16 February 2009 à 11:25


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