Skip to content

Relicence 4 files to LGPL-2.1-or-later

Felix Ernst requested to merge felixernst/gwenview:simplify_licencing into master

The licence of Gwenview is probably supposed to be GPL-2.0-or-later but this was ignored in four files that were recently added.

This commit changes the licences for these four files.

This MR can not be legally merged until @ahiemstra has approved it.


I created this MR because I've received an eMail by Jim Rotmalm who seemingly has an eye on the licencing situation in Gwenview. I didn't really check if what he says is correct (which would be a bit of work because Gwenview isn't Reuse compliant) but I think it is less work anyways to simply trust him. :)

Here is the eMail:


Hello.

I was looking into Gwenview to figure out which specific license it is under and noticed that you, and another, added two files each under:

SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1-only OR LGPL-3.0-only OR LicenseRef-KDE-Accepted-LGPL

app/alignwithsidebarwidgetaction.cpp app/alignwithsidebarwidgetaction.h lib/documentview/alphabackgrounditem.cpp lib/documentview/alphabackgrounditem.h

Those four files are the only ones having that as the license in Gwenview. With that license then Gwenview is no longer effectively GPL-2.0-or-later, and it becomes difficult to simply say which license Gwenview is under.

The rest of the files seem to be mostly GPL-2.0-or-later, with just two under LGPL-2.1-or-later, from what I can currently tell.

The two files under LGPL-2.1-or-later: lib/imageformats/fitsformat/bayer.c lib/imageformats/fitsformat/bayer.h

From: https://community.kde.org/Policies/Licensing_Policy

"They may also be licensed under one of the following terms if it helps with license compatibility: LGPL-2.1-or-later: LGPL version 2.1 or later"

So, I would suggest to adhere to the license that any given project is in. Not only does it make things cleaner, but it helps with compatibility. So if you were to relicense your contributions under LGPL-2.1-or-later then it would help Gwenview to stay GPL-2.0-or-later, which the main page says it is, with the old SPDX-identifier: GPL-2.0+

https://apps.kde.org/gwenview/

Although, upon looking deeper I see that there are two other older files under "GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only":

lib/flowlayout.cpp lib/flowlayout.h

So, in actuality, Gwenview has never been GPL-2.0-or-later, unless those two files can and have been excluded.

I hope I did not miss anything. Correct me if I am wrong.

All the best!

Merge request reports