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Borneq

Different versions of GPL

dxflib of RibbonSoft is under GNU General Public License version 2, LibreDWG is under GNU General Public License version 3 (or at you option any later version). How link code under two version of GPL?
GPL can't linked with non-free code but:
in GLP v2 is:
" 10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author
to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free
Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes
make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals
of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and
of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally."

In http://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html is:
"When we say that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible, it means there is no legal way to combine code under GPLv2 with code under GPLv3 in a single program. This is because both GPLv2 and GPLv3 are copyleft licenses: each of them says, “If you include code under this license in a larger program, the larger program must be under this license too.” There is no way to make them compatible. We could add a GPLv2-compatibility clause to GPLv3, but it wouldn't do the job, because GPLv2 would need a similar clause."

R. van Twisk

Re: Different versions of GPL

Administrator

I tried for over a year now to ask FSF to make LibreDWG GPLv2 or higher but

unfortunately they are not cooperating and want to keep LibreDWG as GPLv3.

Therefor LibreCAD cannot use LibreDWg directly, which is a shame if you ask me.

The only way I can see this happing (I am not a license guru) is that we create a seperate program that uses

LibreDWG to convert data into DXF and we read that, save will be the other way around.

But IMHO this is hackish.

Ries

On Jan 25, 2012, at 6:33 AM, Borneq [via LibreCAD] wrote:

dxflib of RibbonSoft is under GNU General Public License version 2, LibreDWG is under GNU General Public License version 3 (or at you option any later version). How link code under two version of GPL?
GPL can't linked with non-free code but:
in GLP v2 is:
" 10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author
to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free
Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes
make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals
of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and
of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally."

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Borneq

Re: Different versions of GPL

What about another way? Changing licence LibreCad to GPL v3. I see, LibreCad is based on QCad on licence GPL v2. Is posssible QCad change licence?

dxli

Re: Different versions of GPL

I can answer this.

qCAD is not under our control, and qCAD requested our project to honor the "GPLv2 only" licensing status of inheritted code from qCAD. I don't see any reason for qCAD to change its licensing terms.

Dongxu

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 8:07 AM, Borneq [via LibreCAD] <[hidden email]> wrote:

What about another way? Changing licence LibreCad to GPL v3. I see, LibreCad is based on QCad on licence GPL v2. Is posssible QCad change licence?

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--
Dongxu Li, Ph.D.

maqifrnswa

Re: Different versions of GPL

In reply to this post by Borneq

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 6:33 AM, Borneq [via LibreCAD]
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> dxflib of RibbonSoft is under GNU General Public License version 2, LibreDWG
> is under GNU General Public License version 3 (or at you option any later
> version). How link code under two version of GPL?

We've been talking with the FSF on several occasions about this as
well as the libreDWG developers. I happened to talk to one of the FSF
licensing expert volunteers a couple weeks ago. Rallaz and dxli are
totally correct. QCAD is GPLv2 only. That causes lots of problems when
interfacing with other libraries (such as libreDWG which is GPLv3+).
The only way to upgrade QCAD is to totally remove the original code
and replace it with GPLv2+. We're allowed to, and have been, licensing
all patches as GPLv2+. Eventually it is possible that we would have
totally rewritten the QCAD code with entirely new stuff. If that
happens, we can re-license as GPLv2+.

However, the developers of librwdxf (GPLv2+) plan on writing a new
application which converts .dxf into .dwg. LibreCAD can call that
application from within LibreCAD after librecad saves a .dxf file
using libredxf. That is a legal way to use libredwg since librecad
would never link to libredwg, but fork and run a conversion utility.

dxli

Re: Different versions of GPL

Hi Scott,

it seems that the LibreCAD PPA has stopped updating after Jan. 4th.

Just wondering if there's a problem with that.

Thanks,

Dongxu

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 9:25 AM, showard314 [via LibreCAD] <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 6:33 AM, Borneq [via LibreCAD]
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> dxflib of RibbonSoft is under GNU General Public License version 2, LibreDWG
> is under GNU General Public License version 3 (or at you option any later
> version). How link code under two version of GPL?

We've been talking with the FSF on several occasions about this as
well as the libreDWG developers. I happened to talk to one of the FSF
licensing expert volunteers a couple weeks ago. Rallaz and dxli are
totally correct. QCAD is GPLv2 only. That causes lots of problems when
interfacing with other libraries (such as libreDWG which is GPLv3+).
The only way to upgrade QCAD is to totally remove the original code
and replace it with GPLv2+. We're allowed to, and have been, licensing
all patches as GPLv2+. Eventually it is possible that we would have
totally rewritten the QCAD code with entirely new stuff. If that
happens, we can re-license as GPLv2+.

However, the developers of librwdxf (GPLv2+) plan on writing a new
application which converts .dxf into .dwg. LibreCAD can call that
application from within LibreCAD after librecad saves a .dxf file
using libredxf. That is a legal way to use libredwg since librecad
would never link to libredwg, but fork and run a conversion utility.

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--
Dongxu Li, Ph.D.

maqifrnswa

Re: Different versions of GPL

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:22 AM, dxli [via LibreCAD]
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hi Scott,
>
> it seems that the LibreCAD PPA has stopped updating after Jan. 4th.
>
> Just wondering if there's a problem with that.

thanks for pointing it out. From the log:
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/89524868/librecad-dev-librecad-dev-librecad.log
"The repository you are fetching from contains submodules. To
continue, upgrade your Bazaar repository to a format that supports
nested trees, such as 'development-subtree'."
So this is a bug in the auto-import of the code to the builders

If the git repo contains submodules, then autobuilding won't work as
we have it set up. Are the submodules necessary?
The bug is marked as work in-progress as of yesterday:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bzr/+bug/402814

Hopefully the bug will be fixed soon, but if the submodules aren't
necessary we can get rid of them.

~Scott

Lisandro D. N. Pérez Meyer

Re: Different versions of GPL

In reply to this post by R. van Twisk

On Mié 25 Ene 2012 09:40:29 usted escribió:
[snip]
> The only way I can see this happing (I am not a license guru) is that we
> create a seperate program that uses LibreDWG to convert data into DXF and
> we read that, save will be the other way around. But IMHO this is hackish.

Well, IMHO this is not hackish and indeed it may be a good design choice. This
would help to better modularize LibreCAD, leaving some functionality to
external tools, specially if they are command-line based. Kind of unix
principle, I guess.

OTOH, this external tools, wether developed or not inside LibreCAD project,
can be very helpfull for other people in other situations, think in batch
conversion, for example.

Kinds regards, Lisandro.

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maqifrnswa

Re: Different versions of GPL

2012/1/25 Lisandro D. N. Pérez Meyer [via LibreCAD]
<[hidden email]>

>
> On Mié 25 Ene 2012 09:40:29 usted escribió:
> [snip]
> > The only way I can see this happing (I am not a license guru) is that we
> > create a seperate program that uses LibreDWG to convert data into DXF and
> > we read that, save will be the other way around. But IMHO this is hackish.
>
> Well, IMHO this is not hackish and indeed it may be a good design choice. This
> would help to better modularize LibreCAD, leaving some functionality to
> external tools, specially if they are command-line based. Kind of unix
> principle, I guess.

The FSF opinion: creating a fork and run tool for the explicit purpose
of circumventing GPL is not ok. However, this conversion tool would be
a great stand-alone project for the reasons Lisandro mentioned. There
are many people, projects, companies out there that have lots of one
type of file they'd like to convert to another. In that case, the tool
is useful on it's own and LibreCAD is using it as well.

~Scott

R. van Twisk

Re: Different versions of GPL

Administrator

In reply to this post by Lisandro D. N. Pérez Meyer

Lisandro,

I can only speak for myself. But starting a external process to read a file in sounds hackish

but if it needs to be done.. it needs to be done.

The problem, with this method is that if DWG support features that DXF doesnt,

then we can never import a feature that LibreCAD can support and that a DWG has embedded

but due to DXF not supporting that feature, we can never import it. A solution could be to create

our intermediate file format… but that creates a lot of extra work that can be avoided

if we could directly work with a API that can read a DWG file.

I am all for doing it through a plugin interface like most programs do which is good from a API stand point of few.

Ries

On Jan 25, 2012, at 12:07 PM, Lisandro D. N. Pérez Meyer [via LibreCAD] wrote:

On Mié 25 Ene 2012 09:40:29 usted escribió:
[snip]
> The only way I can see this happing (I am not a license guru) is that we
> create a seperate program that uses LibreDWG to convert data into DXF and
> we read that, save will be the other way around. But IMHO this is hackish.

Well, IMHO this is not hackish and indeed it may be a good design choice. This
would help to better modularize LibreCAD, leaving some functionality to
external tools, specially if they are command-line based. Kind of unix
principle, I guess.

OTOH, this external tools, wether developed or not inside LibreCAD project,
can be very helpfull for other people in other situations, think in batch
conversion, for example.

Kinds regards, Lisandro.

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R. van Twisk

Re: Different versions of GPL

Administrator

In reply to this post by maqifrnswa

On Jan 25, 2012, at 12:14 PM, showard314 [via LibreCAD] wrote:

2012/1/25 Lisandro D. N. Pérez Meyer [via LibreCAD]
<<a href="x-msg://2451/user/SendEmail.jtp?type=node&node=5430783&i=0" target="_top" rel="nofollow" link="external">[hidden email]>

>
> On Mié 25 Ene 2012 09:40:29 usted escribió:
> [snip]
> > The only way I can see this happing (I am not a license guru) is that we
> > create a seperate program that uses LibreDWG to convert data into DXF and
> > we read that, save will be the other way around. But IMHO this is hackish.
>
> Well, IMHO this is not hackish and indeed it may be a good design choice. This
> would help to better modularize LibreCAD, leaving some functionality to
> external tools, specially if they are command-line based. Kind of unix
> principle, I guess.
The FSF opinion: creating a fork and run tool for the explicit purpose
of circumventing GPL is not ok. However, this conversion tool would be
a great stand-alone project for the reasons Lisandro mentioned. There
are many people, projects, companies out there that have lots of one
type of file they'd like to convert to another. In that case, the tool
is useful on it's own and LibreCAD is using it as well.

These tools already exists and are available for Windows, Linux and OSX from the open design alliance.

I never tried them but they can be found here : http://www.opendesign.com/guestfiles/TeighaFileConverter

What I am trying to say, is that it's a lot more work for the LibreCAD team if we make these conversion utility and beable

to support all DWG features reliably and that might/properly mean we need to create our own intermediate file format.

Life would be a lot easer of FSF would re-licence OpenDWG to GPLv2 or higher….

That said, OpenDWG only supports up to AutoCAD 2004 and not higher so it might be buggy anyways..

I am open to anything, and if somebody stands up and makes that stand aline conversion tool,

I am all for having that located under the LibreCAD umbrella.

~Scott

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