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The legal situation

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zxq9

The legal situation

Checking closer into the source licensing issue we discussed the other day about including GPLv3 OpenDWG support into GPLv2 LibreCAD, it appears that the existing LibreCAD license permits the code to be released at any GPL license above 2 anyway.

So you have the freedom to upgrade the LibreCAD license to GPLv3 if you want (and anybody else can fork it to GPLv3 if they wanted anyway) so there is nothing stopping us from including OpenDWG now instead of waiting for permission to put GPLv3 code into a GPLv2 program.

From the comment header to /src/main/main.cpp:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

...and so the real questions are:
1. Does anybody have a problem with upgrading the LibreCAD license from GPLv2 to GPLv3?
2. Does anybody know of a reason why we can not upgrade the license?
3. Does anybody think that upgrading is a bad idea?

R. van Twisk

Re: The legal situation

Administrator

Hey,

I am not sure where you get main.cpp from that is the license "either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version." I have been looking for that in "qcad-2.0.5.0-1-community.src.tar.gz" but as far as I can see is that QCad CE is released as GPLv2

Ries

On Aug 6, 2011, at 8:21 PM, zxq9 [via LibreCAD] wrote:

Checking closer into the source licensing issue we discussed the other day about including GPLv3 OpenDWG support into GPLv2 LibreCAD, it appears that the existing LibreCAD license permits the code to be released at any GPL license above 2 anyway.

So you have the freedom to upgrade the LibreCAD license to GPLv3 if you want (and anybody else can fork it to GPLv3 if they wanted anyway) so there is nothing stopping us from including OpenDWG now instead of waiting for permission to put GPLv3 code into a GPLv2 program.

From the comment header to /src/main/main.cpp:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

...and so the real questions are:
1. Does anybody have a problem with upgrading the LibreCAD license from GPLv2 to GPLv3?
2. Does anybody know of a reason why we can not upgrade the license?
3. Does anybody think that upgrading is a bad idea?

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maqifrnswa

Re: The legal situation

On Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 10:55 AM, R. van Twisk [via LibreCAD]
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> Hey,
> I am not sure where you get main.cpp from that is the license "either
> version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version." I have
> been looking for that in "qcad-2.0.5.0-1-community.src.tar.gz" but as far as
> I can see is that QCad CE is released as GPLv2
> Ries

Ries,
There seems to be an ambiguity here. See:
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=debian-science%2Fpackages%2Flibrecad.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=grep&s=at+your+option

Also:
https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/blob/master/src/main/main.cpp#L6

Also, see gpl-2.0.txt line 299:
https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/blob/master/gpl-2.0.txt
https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/blob/master/gpl-2.0.txt#L296

Where does it explicitly say only GPL2?

~Scott

zxq9

Re: The legal situation

In reply to this post by R. van Twisk

This is where I get it from:

[ceverett@jalapeno LibreCAD]$ head -n 12 LibreCAD/src/main/main.cpp
/****************************************************************************
**
** This file is part of the LibreCAD project, a 2D CAD program
**
** Copyright (C) 2010 R. van Twisk (librecad@rvt.dds.nl)
** Copyright (C) 2001-2003 RibbonSoft. All rights reserved.
**
**
** This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
** it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
** the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
** (at your option) any later version.

And... checking the QCad code does not show that. So now we're left with a sort of ambiguous situation. An abandonned project (QCad) being picked up by a new community which made significant changes and re-reeleased as GPLv2+. Interesting.

So this is more complex than I thought. I need to get in touch with the legal guys at Red Hat and let you know what they have to say.

R. van Twisk

Re: The legal situation

Administrator

Hey,

I made a big boo boo there and I cannot believe that I have seen it before,

even though I was pointed to this 2 or 3 times, I 'think' I always looked at the original

source and I always though I applied a correct GPLv2 license which I didn't.

Let me be clear, LibreCAD is licensed as GPLv2, this was always stored

like this in my brain aswell. I must have copied a wrong license

and read many times over the 'or higher' portion, sorry guys,

I don't have a language brain (after seven years living in Ecuador,

I still don't speak or understand a whole lot of spanish.... imagine).

Anyways,

I will try and see if I can change the license throughout the complete

git tree to correct this situation.

Again my apologies to this situation.

Ries

On Aug 7, 2011, at 4:05 PM, zxq9 [via LibreCAD] wrote:

This is where I get it from:

[ceverett@jalapeno LibreCAD]$ head -n 12 LibreCAD/src/main/main.cpp
/****************************************************************************
**
** This file is part of the LibreCAD project, a 2D CAD program
**
** Copyright (C) 2010 R. van Twisk ([hidden email])
** Copyright (C) 2001-2003 RibbonSoft. All rights reserved.
**
**
** This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
** it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
** the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
** (at your option) any later version.

And... checking the QCad code does not show that. So now we're left with a sort of ambiguous situation. An abandonned project (QCad) being picked up by a new community which made significant changes and re-reeleased as GPLv2+. Interesting.

So this is more complex than I thought. I need to get in touch with the legal guys at Red Hat and let you know what they have to say.

If you reply to this email, your message will be added to the discussion below:
http://librecad.1049103.n5.nabble.com/The-legal-situation-tp4673951p4675779.html

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To unsubscribe from LibreCAD, click here.

andrew

Re: The legal situation

> I will try and see if I can change the license throughout the complete
> git tree to correct this situation.

Please do so. The source code of QCAD 2.0.5.0 is released under GPL v2 only, without the "(at your option) any later version" bit.

Andrew Mustun
--
RibbonSoft, GmbH
http://www.ribbonsoft.com