Aargh! My apologies for an earlier mail, I must have accidentally hit the Send button. :-( On 11 May 2003, at 14:52, David Neary wrote: > Sven Neumann wrote: > > David Neary <bolsh@xxxxxxxx> writes: > The way I see it, there are 3 solutions - > > 1) Accept that SIOD stays, and if repackagers want to distributee the > GIMP as non-free, then so be it. Either copy gif code from another gpl > program (say gif2png) or contact opriginal author for re-licencing, or > add it as an exception. Contact nlfilter author for relicencing, or > drop plug-in. If the contacts don't yielmd answers by the end of this > week, we should make a decision. > > For the rest of the code, either acknowledge that there is code > that needs relicencing, and get onto the people who did it, or > declare that all the code that was taken from bsd licenced > software was fairly trivial, and re-licence under GPL. For the > most part, the latter should do. > > 2) Continue to delay the release of a bug-fix patch for the gimp > until we have a new, fully tested scheme interpreter, and we can > get in contact with anyone who ever wrote code for the gimp and > didn't realise that the BSD advertising clause was incompatible > with the GPL (even if they're now working a humanitarian aid > worker in the Peru highlands who haven't looked at a computer > since they wrote a gimp plug-in as their final year project). > > I think we should go for 1, send requests to relicence bits of > borrowed code to GPL for the important bits, just declare > ourselves compliant and relicence for the trivial bits, add SIOD > as an exception to our GPL, and if we haven't gotten permission > to relicence nlfilter by next Friday, drop it. If we haven't > gotten permission to relicence gif, steal some gpl code. Or steal some > GPL code now... Did I miss a solution (you said three)? >From an older thread ("Copyrights and licenses", May 2001): On 29 May 2001, at 14:30, Sven Neumann wrote: > Dave Neary <dave.neary@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > Sven: > > > Everything distributed with The GIMP should be GPL, LGPL or a > > > compatible license. Actually we assume that all plug-ins in the > > > GIMP distribution are GPLed. > > > > To my mind (and I may be wrong there), plug-ins are just > > applications which depend on the GIMP, and an interface > > provided by it - so they can be licenced under any old > > licence that you might deign to choose. In much the same > > way as (say) proprietary Linux applications are just > > applications which depend on Linux & interfaces it > > provides (when distributed in binary form anyway). > > > > So if one wanted to release a plug-in as a proprietary > > application (God knows why you'd want to - I don't > > believe anyone would pay for a module to a graphics > > application), I don't see any GPL issues myself. Am I > > wrong? > > You are right. I was speaking about plug-ins/scripts > distributed with The GIMP. We have choosen to make libgimp > LGPL to allow others to choose different licenses for their > plug-ins, but we will refuse to distribute them with The GIMP. So it would seem the policy was only to allow GPL'ed plug-ins, even if we don't have to. > In any case, I think that we should split it into 3 bugs, > nlfilter, gif and SIOD licencing, and for the rest, just declare > everything GPL. Can anyone but the author declare something to be GPL'ed? How does that work? -- branko collin collin@xxxxxxxxx