kdelibs/klauncher license question

[Michael Pyne]

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Hi all,

While looking into altering the behavior of executing .desktop files in response to the thread on it (and the LWN and slashdot stories) I came across what I believe is a mistake in licensing:

The kdelibs/kinit/proctitle.{h,cpp} files are both licenses GPLv2+ instead of LGPL like the rest of kdelibs.

In this case it is compiled into the executable kdeinit4 (not a library however). So that's kind of a mitigating factor, but is this desired? I guess really the question is does this fall into a "Source file that is part of a library with a public API which is part of KDE Platform" [1]?

klauncher itself is accessed over D-Bus and not linked to directly but it does provide library-like services to KDE applications (and is used as such by various code in kdelibs which *does* get linked in). So is this something that is wrong, technically correct but undesired, or desired licensing? (The other files in klauncher are licensed LGPL...)?

Regards,
- Michael Pyne

[1] http://techbase.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy para. 3

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On Thursday 19 February 2009 01:44:08 Michael Pyne wrote:

> The kdelibs/kinit/proctitle.{h,cpp} files are both licenses GPLv2+ instead
> of LGPL like the rest of kdelibs.
>
> In this case it is compiled into the executable kdeinit4 (not a library
> however).  So that's kind of a mitigating factor, but is this desired?  I
> guess really the question is does this fall into a "Source file that is
> part of a library with a public API which is part of KDE Platform" [1]?

It doesn't matter, because proctitle.{h,cpp} are only in an application, not a
library.  Note that the D-Bus interface does not propagate the GPL, only
proper linking (in the compiler sense) does.

The reason it is under the GPL is that they come from another project (an FTP
daemon, if memory serves me correctly, though I'm not sure which one) that is
licensed under the GPL.

Alex



--
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  -- Terry Pratchett



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