KDE and GPLv3

[Brett Smith-5]

Hello,

My name is Brett Smith; I handle various license-related issues for the
Free Software Foundation.  With the recent release of Qt under GPLv3,
I've been looking to learn more about KDE's own license plans -- just so
I have a sense of how things stand for the major users of the GPL.  I'm
not here to tell you to do things a certain way or anything like that;
I'm just looking for information.

I saw the page on your Wiki about efforts to make sure that all the
other code in KDE could be upgraded to GPLv3, and I'm glad to see that
that's apparently going well.  I was wondering: do you know if KDE
itself is expecting to upgrade to GPLv3 relatively soon?  And is that
likely going to happen all at once in the KDE universe, or will various
different components and applications change at different times?

I'd appreciate any information you can provide.

Thank you,

--
Brett Smith
Licensing Compliance Engineer, Free Software Foundation


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[Sune Vuorela-2]

On 2008-01-28, Brett Smith <brett@...> wrote:
> that's apparently going well.  I was wondering: do you know if KDE
> itself is expecting to upgrade to GPLv3 relatively soon?  And is that
> likely going to happen all at once in the KDE universe, or will various

I currently don't hope that KDE is planning to move to GPLv3 in the near
future. AT least not until it has been checked that all other components
used by KDE is gplv3 compatible.

Last I checked, poppler for example, was gplv2only.

/Sune
 - mostly involved thru distro packaging.

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[Cornelius Schumacher]

Hi Brett,

On Monday 28 January 2008 19:14:11 Brett Smith wrote:
> My name is Brett Smith; I handle various license-related issues for the
> Free Software Foundation.  With the recent release of Qt under GPLv3,
> I've been looking to learn more about KDE's own license plans -- just so
> I have a sense of how things stand for the major users of the GPL.  I'm
> not here to tell you to do things a certain way or anything like that;
> I'm just looking for information.

We appreciate your interest. As licensing is such a complex topic we are also
always glad about well-informed input.

> I saw the page on your Wiki about efforts to make sure that all the
> other code in KDE could be upgraded to GPLv3, and I'm glad to see that
> that's apparently going well.  I was wondering: do you know if KDE
> itself is expecting to upgrade to GPLv3 relatively soon?  And is that
> likely going to happen all at once in the KDE universe, or will various
> different components and applications change at different times?

The KDE e.V., the formal organization behind the KDE project recently has
decided with a big majority about an updated licensing policy
(http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy) by a vote of its members.
The policy basically makes sure that it's possible to write both GPLv2 and
GPLv3 programs for KDE.

As there is no central copyright holder for KDE, it's not likely that there
will be license changes for big parts of the code at the same time. Now that
Qt also is GPLv3 licensed, I would expect that GPLv3 third party applications
will come up. But due to the big number of available applications and the
large codebase there always will be a mixture of various licenses be in use.

> I'd appreciate any information you can provide.

If you have more questions please don't hesitate to ask.

--
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher@...>
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[Stan Cunningham]

Hi Brett,

--- Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher@...> wrote:
> Hi Brett,
>
> On Monday 28 January 2008 19:14:11 Brett Smith
wrote:
> > My name is Brett Smith; I handle various
license-related issues
> for the
> > Free Software Foundation.  With the recent release
of Qt under
> GPLv3,
> > I've been looking to learn more about KDE's own
license plans --
> just so
> > I have a sense of how things stand for the major
users of the GPL.
>  I'm
> > not here to tell you to do things a certain way or
anything like
> that;
> > I'm just looking for information.
> > I saw the page on your Wiki about efforts to make
sure that all
> the
> > other code in KDE could be upgraded to GPLv3, and
I'm glad to see
> that
> > that's apparently going well.  I was wondering: do
you know if KDE
> > itself is expecting to upgrade to GPLv3 relatively
soon?  And is
> that
> > likely going to happen all at once in the KDE
universe, or will
> various
> > different components and applications change at
different times?
>
> The KDE e.V., the formal organization behind the KDE
project
> recently has
> decided with a big majority about an updated
licensing policy
> (http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy)
by a vote of its
> members.
> The policy basically makes sure that it's possible
to write both
> GPLv2 and
> GPLv3 programs for KDE.

You can check out the progress of relicensing KDE
files from GPLv2-only to GPLv2+ at:

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_Relicensing

and

http://toma.kovoks.nl/kde/

Stan


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