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Different versions of GPL

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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

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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.

If you reply to this email, your message will be added to the discussion below:

http://librecad.1049103.n5.nabble.com/Different-versions-of-GPL-tp5429963p5430297.html

To start a new topic under LibreCAD-dev, email [hidden email]
To unsubscribe from LibreCAD-dev, click here.
NAML

--
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

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R. van Twisk

Re: Different versions of GPL

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