[Koha] Question about GPLv3 and AGPLv3

[Lars Wirzenius]

On ma, 2010-05-10 at 22:25 -0400, Bob Ewart wrote:
> I have installed Koha in a local library.  Our installation is only
> available on our local area network, not exposed to the internet.  Early
> on we had a request to be able to print our library cards and spine
> labels in a format that was not possible by Koha.  So I made some minor
> changes to the label and patron card routines  to produce what we
> needed.  I'm perfectly willing to share the code I modified, but I don't
> think I know how to  re-package it as a source tar-ball.
> 
> If we go to GPLv3 or AGPLv3, would I have to make available the whole
> source package?
> 
> I know that a number of libraries have modified the CSS and the front
> page.  Would they have to make the whole source available?

If the CSS is specified as being part of Koha, and Koha as a whole is
licensed under AGPLv3 (or later), then I think they'll have to do that.

Doing that can be made really easy. So easy that it does not differ from
the current way of installing Koha at all.

The Koha installation can create the tarball for you. If providing the
tarball for download would be too risky for you from a bandwidth point
of view, the installation script can provide a patch instead, which
probably be quite small. Alternatively, we can make it possible for you
to push the changes to a public git repository, and have your Koha
installation link there. It is not necessary to provide a tarball at
all, and you won't have to provide bandwidth for distributing the
changes yourself.

There is a cost involved with moving to AGPLv3+, but we can make it be
quite small. The actual details of how to implement that are undecided,
this early in the discussion, but it's entirely doable, and won't be all
that hard, either.