gkrellm license change notificaition

[Hans de Goede]

Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Bill Nottingham (notting at redhat.com) said: 
>> Hans de Goede (j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl) said: 
>>> For those who want to know, gkrellm has moved to GPL v3, coming from GPL v2
>> Are *ANY* of the plugins that use it, even the ones we do not ship, licensed
>> under only GPL2? If so, we really can't push this on earlier releases.
> 
> ... and so it begins ...
> 
> gkrellmms brings in xmms. As long as it's not pulling in any xmms *plugins*,
> this is probably OK. If it is, I don't even want to think about it, because
> that way lies madness.
> 

AFAIK it is only talking to xmms through some kinda IPC, it might use parts of 
libxmms for this, but thats all.

> gkrellem-gkfreq does not specify 'or any later version', so is now no longer
> distributable.
> 
> gkrellmoon does not specify 'or any later version', so is now no longer
> distributable.
> 
> gkrellsun does not specify 'or any later version', so is now no longer
> distributable.
> 
> gkrellweather does not specify 'or any later version', so is now no longer
> distributable
> 

As said in my previous post, one could argue that they were not distributable 
then in the first place because:
1) They are a derived work of gkrellm
2) gkrellm was licensed GPL v2 or (at your option) any later version
3) having a derived work of gkrellm that allows only gpl v2 would be placing an
    additional restriction on distributing, which is not allowed.

In essence having a GPL v2 only work derive from a gpl v2 or any later version, 
is the same as forking a GPL v2 or any later version work, and removing the or 
any later version from the conditions for the fork, which can be argued is not 
allowed. You are restricting what the user can do. He may no longer distribute 
your fork under a later GPL version, which means he has less rights then the 
original / initial copyright holders granted him -> GPL violation.

Or one can argue plugins using a clearly defined modular interface are not a 
derived work, in which case there isn't a problem under the GPL v3 either.


> So, four separate gkrellm plugins are now no longer distributable until
> a) they change licenses
> b) we remove the new gkrellm
> 
> Are we *sure* we want to ship a new gkrellm with the new license?
> 

Yes, currently there isn't much in the new version making it worth any license 
hassle, but staying with the GPL v2 or later version is a dead road, I don't 
want to be maintaining a bit rotting version 2 years from now.

Also gkrellm should be the least of our troubles, just wait till readline goes 
GPL v3, then we will have some real fireworks.

In the mean time involved gkrellm plugin maintainers, please contact upstream 
and kindly ask them to move to GPL v3 too.

Regards,

Hans