Kdenlive License follow-up.

Kdenlive License follow-up.

[marinus.savoritias]

Hi,

I asked on the KDE matrix server regarding the Kdenlive licensing and turns out they use
GPL-3 in OpenSUSE. Most files are either GPL-2 or GPL-3 or later + KDE Ev. clause so the package can't be licensed as GPL-2 like Gentoo or GPL-2+ as in Guix.
As far as I know if a package has some GPL-3 files then it becomes GPL-3 as a whole is that correct?

Regards,
Fanis

Re: Kdenlive License follow-up.

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi Fanis,

> I asked on the KDE matrix server regarding the Kdenlive licensing and
> turns out they use GPL-3 in OpenSUSE. Most files are either GPL-2 or
> GPL-3 or later + KDE Ev. clause so the package can't be licensed as
> GPL-2 like Gentoo or GPL-2+ as in Guix.

Thank you for the information.

If you could point us to a file that is licensed under GPL version 3 or
later we should change the license in the package definition to (list
license:gpl2+ license:gpl3+) with a comment to state that the package is
effectively under GPL version 3 or later.

> As far as I know if a package has some GPL-3 files then it becomes
> GPL-3 as a whole is that correct?

Not necessarily.  If it combines files under GPLv2 (only) with files
that are under GPLv3 (only) then the project as a whole has conflicting
licensing terms.  That’s why the “or later” clause is really important.
Software containing files under GPLv2+ and GPLv3 (only) would have an
effective license of GPLv3 (only), while the individual files still
retain their own terms.

--
Ricardo

Re: Kdenlive License follow-up.

[Jesse Gibbons]

On Wed, 2019-09-18 at 21:40 +0200, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
> Hi Fanis,
> 
> > I asked on the KDE matrix server regarding the Kdenlive licensing and
> > turns out they use GPL-3 in OpenSUSE. Most files are either GPL-2 or
> > GPL-3 or later + KDE Ev. clause so the package can't be licensed as
> > GPL-2 like Gentoo or GPL-2+ as in Guix.
> 
> Thank you for the information.
> 
> If you could point us to a file that is licensed under GPL version 3 or
> later we should change the license in the package definition to (list
> license:gpl2+ license:gpl3+) with a comment to state that the package is
> effectively under GPL version 3 or later.
> 
> > As far as I know if a package has some GPL-3 files then it becomes
> > GPL-3 as a whole is that correct?
> 
> Not necessarily.  If it combines files under GPLv2 (only) with files
> that are under GPLv3 (only) then the project as a whole has conflicting
> licensing terms.  That’s why the “or later” clause is really important.
> Software containing files under GPLv2+ and GPLv3 (only) would have an
> effective license of GPLv3 (only), while the individual files still
> retain their own terms.
> 
> --
> Ricardo
> 
> 

gpl-3+
https://cgit.kde.org/kdenlive.git/tree/src/core.cpp

gpl-2+
https://cgit.kde.org/kdenlive.git/tree/src/capture/mltdevicecapture.cpp

Re: Kdenlive License follow-up.

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi,

Jesse Gibbons <jgibbons2357@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, 2019-09-18 at 21:40 +0200, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:
>> Hi Fanis,
>> 
>> > I asked on the KDE matrix server regarding the Kdenlive licensing and
>> > turns out they use GPL-3 in OpenSUSE. Most files are either GPL-2 or
>> > GPL-3 or later + KDE Ev. clause so the package can't be licensed as
>> > GPL-2 like Gentoo or GPL-2+ as in Guix.
>> 
>> Thank you for the information.
>> 
>> If you could point us to a file that is licensed under GPL version 3 or
>> later we should change the license in the package definition to (list
>> license:gpl2+ license:gpl3+) with a comment to state that the package is
>> effectively under GPL version 3 or later.

Is it really useful to record gpl2+ in the license list?  I've always
seen the license field of records as 'the effective license(s)' that can
the package can be licensed under, as this seem more useful to me than
having an long exhaustive list of licenses that are overridden by
others.

So in this case, my personal preference would be to list the license of
the package as its actual license, that is, gpl3+.  Thoughts?

Maxim