Re: Galeon License Conflicts -- need OSS license expert advice
On Sat, 29 Jul 2000, Nate Case wrote:
> I apologize in advance if this is sent to an inappropriate address.
> This is intended to go to the Debian people who are familiar and
You might want to try debian-legal@lists.debian.org as well.
> want to do. Another option is to add a clause to Galeon's GPL license
> to allow explicit linking to the MPL'ed code. I personally don't know
> if this is okay or not, but the latter option does seem like a feasible
> solution.
I did this with APT and QT1 to allow QT1 based GUIs to be written, and
will probably update that for QT2 if someone asks..
The basic language looks like this:
Apt is copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 Jason Gunthorpe and others.
Apt is licened under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL),
version 2.0 or later, as published by the Free Software Foundation. See
the file COPYING.GPL [included], /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL, or
<http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.txt> for the terms of the latest version
of the GNU General Public License.
In addition, prior to November 15th, 2000, apt may be distributed under
terms identical to the above with the following addition:
Works using apt may link against the GUI library "libqt", copyright by
Troll Tech AS, Norway, provided that:
1. The version of "libqt" is licensed under the terms of the "Qt Free Edition
License" published by Troll Tech AS. The license terms identified as
the Qt Free Edition License below are the only such terms under which
distribution of works derived from both apt and "libqt" are permitted;
and
2. The source code of the version of "libqt" used is
a) Distributed with the binary version;
or
b) Downloadable by anyone, without fee, using a publicly-announced
URL on the Internet, for a duration of at least three years
starting with distribution of the binary version.
On and after November 15th, 2000, the above additional terms lose all
force, and apt will be licensed only under the terms of the GNU General
Public License, version 2.0 or later.
--------------------------
[included after is a copy of the QTFEL for reference]
You probably won't want the death date on Mozilla compatiblity :>
Notice also that the addition specifically only allows the use of libqt,
not other random QTFEL licensed stuff, and then goes on to force the
distributor to include source to the QTFEL stuff. Basically that prevents
someone from keeping their code that uses my library closed.
It is entirely possible for you to add a optional clause like the above to
allow linking with the MPL, but be aware that your code *must not* use any
GPL'd libraries, LGPL is fine, GPL is not.
> - Galeon code is open and protected by the GPL
* Addition to the GPL clause is optional, so Galeon code can be freely
used in other GPL projects without any problem, and Galeon has the bulk of
the GPL protections, sicne Galeon is not a library you don't have much to
worry about as far as people stealing your code.
> - Galeon is able to be distributed freely by organizations such as
> Debian without trouble
* This would be the case since we are allowed now to combine your GPL'd
code with GPL-incompaible Mozilla code.
> - Galeon could be distributed independently of Mozilla (currently the
> user is required to install Mozilla header files if they want to
> compile Galeon, we can't just include them)
AFAIK Debian already has, or will create, -dev packages with the relevenet
libraries and headers for this, so NP again.
Jason
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