[Koha] Proposal To Switch Koha's License to GPLv3 and AGPLv3 or AGPLv3

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Sun, May 9, 2010 at 10:37 PM, Lars Wirzenius <lars at catalyst.net.nz> wrote:
> * It would further simplify things if there is an explicit policy that
> all code included in the project should be using the same license, or at
> least that all new code will use the same license. At the very least all
> licenses used by Koha should be compatible with each other.

Since Koha embeds the source for some third-party libraries,
compatibility of the overall license chosen for Koha is the best that
could be achieved for that kind of code.

> * The copyright ownership of each file is a bit hidden. The copyright
> statements (years, owners) in each file do not seem to reflect actual
> status. This should be cleaned up at some point. Luckily, git has every
> change, correctly attributed, it seems, so it's just some hard work that
> needs to happen. This is somewhat unrelated to a license switch, but
> it's going to be important at some point, so it'd be good to keep it on
> the table.

As a related note, I'd like to gently remind contributors that if you
are adding a new file, please don't blindly copy over the 'Copyright
2000-2002 Katipo Communications' statement unless your contribution is
archeological in nature.

> * GPL version 3 is the updated version of GPL version 2. The spirit is
> the same, most of the conditions are the same, but many of the details
> have changed. Where GPLv2 was written in an era of mailing data tapes
> around, GPLv3 is written in the modern world. In my opinion, the changes
> are for the better, but that is a personal opinion. I don't have a
> pointer to a summary of the changes; perhaps someone could dig one up?

A bit verbose, but: http://gplv3.fsf.org/rms-why.html

> * GPLv3 and AGPLv3 allow mixing, we don't have to choose just one, but
> it'd be simpler to do so. However, it might be reasonable to have some
> of the backend code be GPLv3 to allow other projects to use it more
> easily. For example, the SIP2 implementation?

That points to a problem.  Koha's SIP2 implementation is actually a
fork of OpenNCIP [1], and I would like to merge in Koha's changes at
some point and remove the fork.  But even if the fork never gets
resolved, there's a problem: OpenNCIP's license is GPL2, not GPL2+.
As GPL2 and GPL3 are incompatible licenses, if we license Koha using
the GPL3+, we couldn't use Koha's SIP2 support code until either
OpenNCIP is relicensed to GPL2+ or we get specific permission from the
original copyright holder (the Georgia Public Library Service).

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/openncip/

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
gmcharlt at gmail.com