laryn
commented
6 years ago Gitter conversation RE: licensing pasted below for posterity:
@laryn @kreynen RE: licensing, just to clarify: A library I'm bundling in a module was licensed as MIT, but on the newest version they are licensing as GPL 3 (for open source projects; commercial license for closed code use). Since Backdrop code is GPL2+ you're saying it's not okay to bundle GPL3 only code with it? Or: I just need to change the license for this module to be GPL3?
@kreynen 16:41 While I’m the chair of the Drupal Licensing Working Group and can answer Drupal licensing questions based on years of clarification from the DA and Dries wiht some authority, I’m not entirely sure how the Backdrop project wants to handle contrib On Drupal.org, everyone has to agree to https://www.drupal.org/git-repository-usage-policy before they can create a project node or commit to a repo
@laryn 16:42 @kreynen The second last paragraph here suggests contrib can be released as GPL3 only: https://backdropcms.org/license#gpl-version In which case bundling a GPL3 library is no issue, right?
@kreynen 16:44 That says "GPLv2 and later” which currently is GPL-2.0 and GPL-3.0… so what you commit is dual licenses. Drupal then chooses to add only the GPL-2.0 license and distribute as GPL-2.0 There are no license files in the repo In Backdrop, because the projects exist on GitHub and releases are packaged there as well it makes more sense to include the licenses in each contrib repo This is also the norm in 2018 and helps GitHub identify and search by compatible licenses I pointed out to @quicksketch that the main backdrop repo needs some changes to show up in https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=cms+language%3APHP+license%3Agpl-3.0+language%3APHP&type=Repositories&ref=advsearch&l=PHP&l=PHP https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=cms+language%3APHP+license%3Agpl-2.0+language%3APHP&type=Repositories&ref=advsearch&l=PHP&l=PHP or https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=cms+language%3APHP+license%3Agpl-2.0+language%3APHP+language%3APHP+license%3Agpl+language%3APHP&type=Repositories&ref=advsearch&l=PHP&l=PHP
@kreynen 16:51 So the need for module and theme projects to use the same license as Backdrop comes from defining modules and themes as derivative works… which is a questionable claim that has no case law to back it up. Even when using derivative works, that only applies to the module PHP. It does not apply to non-code assets including some javascript (depending on how it’s implemented). So if Backdrop wants to follow the same policies as Drupal contrib for everything in https://github.com/backdrop-contrib, then every repo should really include both the GPL-2.0 and GPL-3.0 licenses. https://www.drupal.org/about/licensing#gpl2-only-gpl3-only @laryn so you can legally distribute the module and the additional library as GPL-3.0, but you wouldn’t be able to do that from Drupal.org because we want to maintain GPL-2.0 compatibility.
@kreynen 16:56 I don’t know if Backdrop wants to have a mix of GPL-2.0 and GPL-3.0 compatible modules like WordPress or maintain compatiblity with both.
@laryn 16:57 Okay. Complicated, huh? While I have you on the line... This is a port of a Drupal module, but I'm not planning on distributing it on Drupal.org. Can I just relicense it from GPL2 to GPL3, or was it already dual licensed on Drupal.org so I can just re-release as GPL3?
@kreynen 17:00 It was already dual licensed. You are just choosing to distribute as GPL-3.0 for compatibility with other code in the distributions. IMHO, maintaining GPL-2.0 compatiblity is a deadend https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal_lwg/issues/1449452 goes back almost 6 years and the situation for distributions has only gotten worse as Google, Mozilla and other large orgs have standardized on Apache-2.0 Github also prompts users to start project with an MIT, Apache-2.0 or GPL-3.0 license… of those, only MIT is compatible with GPL-2.0
@laryn 17:04 From the thread you linked: "Even though we've been debating this specific issue for 6 years, we spend a lot of time getting developers new to the issue up to speed on the complexity and potential fall out..." Case in point? Thanks again. I'm also not sure what benefit is had from maintaining GPL-2.0.
@kreynen 17:19 GPL-3.0 opens the door to AGPL-3.0 (the license CiviCRM uses) which closes the SaaS/distribution loophole so if I was using Drupal as the backend to a custom app that I ran as a service to avoid triggering the distribution clause, I might be concerned about that I wouldn’t want to get involved in GPL-3.0 if I owned software patents either
jenlampton
Not a rush, but ScrollReveal 4.0 was just released. Noting here for the future and to note any changes.
https://github.com/scrollreveal/scrollreveal
*The license changed but is GPL3 for open source projects, which I'm told is okay to bundle in an open-source module for BackdropCMS – but we may need to change the license of this module to be GPL3 only (rather than GPL2+)