On 13 Jun 2002 21:18:52 +0200, "Sven Neumann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > RaphaXl Quinet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Unfortunately, the license used in these files contains the "advertising > > clause" that is incompatible with the GPL. The copyright notice and the > > permission notice must appear not only in the code, but also in the > > supporting documentation [...] > > I don't see any problem in adding the necessary info to the > documentation that comes with the respective plug-ins. IMO it should > be sufficient to change the gimp-remote man-page and add the info to > the help-pages for the affected plug-ins. We could also mention the > facts in our README but then we have IMO advertized the facts well > enough to satisfy everyone. But, of course, IANAL. Perhaps we should > ask the FSF for legal advice?
This could work as long as the GIMP tarball can be considered as an aggregate of independent programs that are released under separate licenses. Although this is the case from our point of view, I am not sure that a lawyer (playing the devil's advocate) would see it in the same way because they are always distributed as a single package (source tarball or binary packages). I think that we should at least include a statement about that in the distribution. If this works, then there are still two issues to be solved: - We have to remove or change all GPL parts in the plug-ins that contain code that is not GPL-compatible (TIFF, GIF, Script-Fu, ...). If the authors agree, then the license for these plug-ins could be changed to a BSD license or anything that does not conflict with the code that is not GPL-compatible. So we have to get in touch with all authors and check that no part of the code was borrowed from another GPL program for which we do not have the copyright. If we cannot change the license for these plug-ins, we cannot distribute them because they are currently linking GPL-incompatible code with GPL code. The FSF could give some legal advice for this, but I doubt that they would say anything different from what I wrote because there are not too many options available when the code contains several parts with incompatible licenses. Either we change the license on our code to use something else than the GPL, or we rewrite the other parts of the code so that they are GPL-compatible. - We have to state that the GIMP tarball (the whole package) cannot be covered by the GPL because it contains some programs (plug-ins) that would then be released under a different license. > > The GPL cannot be applied to the whole package, because of the problems > > mentioned above. So we have to change the license for the source > > tarball and try to inform those who build binary packages, or stop > > distributing the files that are not GPL-compatible. > > I don't agree. The core and libgimp is GPL and LGPL and should be > advertized as such. Noone will ever link against one of the affected > plug-ins and calling them through the PDB shouldn't be an issue. I am refering to the copyright statement and license that should apply to the whole package. We cannot say that the package is released under the GPL (even if the core and most plug-ins are GPL or LGPL) because it contains some non-GPL parts. As I wrote in my previous message, the current RPM spec file has a copyright statement for the whole package that says "GPL + LGPL". This is wrong. We have to mention that the package contains some parts that are covered by a different license. Or we have to split it in two or more packages: one containing the main program and the supporting libraries (it would only be GPL and LGPL) and one or more containing the plug-ins (using the GPL or BSD licenses). -Raphaël _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
