Licensing
Contents
Ethersex Relicensing Effort
Why does it matter?
Ethersex is licensed unter GPLv3, but a few parts are currently licensed as GPLv2 only or as BSD. However, we still need to validate with the individual copyright holders that a relicense to GPLv2+ or GPLv2+v3 is okay with them.
Therefore, in an effort we're trying to identify the contributors that have contributed under the terms of GPLv2 and where the "+" part was not explicitly mentioned or BSD. If we know that all contributors agreed to a relicense, we can go ahead and flip the license of the individual source file.
How can I help?
By identifying a contributor who as contributed under the terms of GPLv2 or BSD, and contacting him if he wasn't already contacted. Ask him the following questions:
- Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under "GPLv2" to "GPLv2 or later"?
- Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under "GPLv2" to "GPLv2 or GPLv3" ?
- Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under "LGPLv2" to "LGPLv2 or later"?
- Are you okay with relicensing your contributions done under "LGPLv2" to "LGPLv2 or LGPLv3"?
- Are you okay with the Ethersex maintainer deciding on a future licensing change to your code, should that be necessary?
What's next?
- checkout ethersex
- run the script contrib/license-lister
- you interpret the result. check each commit that is being complained about carefully. Try to get the copyright's holder's permission. If you get it, update the whitelist in the script.
- review the list of declared copyright holders in the file.
- if you're all clear, change the license to the most liberal license possible. Document your change verbosely in the git commit log.
Current Reply List
- Please keep the list sorted by family name!
- Please only use "YES" or "NO"
| Name | GPLv2->GPLv2+ | LGPLv2 -> LGPLv2+ | GPLv2 -> GPLv2+v3 | LGPLv2 -> LGPLv2+LGPLv3 | BSD -> GPLv3 | Ethersex decides |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Güntner, Maximilian | YES | YES | YES | YES | YES | NO |
| Kunze, Erik | YES | YES | YES | YES | YES | NO |
Current TODO List
- send an email to authors of source files with incompatible license
Relicensing progress
- reintegrate avr-crypto-lib from http://www.das-labor.org/wiki/AVR-Crypto-Lib
- clarify if files under BSD license need to be relicensed
- new BSD license is GPLv3 compatible http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#OrigBSD
- Adam Dunkels' uIP Stack is licensed under the BSD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UIP_(micro_IP) https://github.com/ethersex/ethersex/blob/master/protocols/uip/uip.c#L25
- MIT/X is compatible with GPLv3
