Licensing

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 relicensing your contributions done under "BSD" to "GPLv3"?

• Are you okay with the Ethersex maintainer deciding on a future licensing change to your code, should that be necessary?

What's next?

1. checkout ethersex
2. run the script contrib/license-lister
3. 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.
4. review the list of declared copyright holders in the file.
5. 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
  • done https://github.com/ethersex/ethersex/commit/09cf68410180bad2e22bd4a26a1b319b1e5ecb25

• 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
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Compatibility_and_multi-licensing