Hi ! We tried our best to convince some partners to base some of their work on QGIS, but they are not ready for open-source yet.
Thus, I started looking into license requirements for QGIS plugins. But the more I read, the more I get confused. I found this blog post [1] which very clearly states plugins must comply to GPL-2. This is confirmed by the gpl faq [2] since I think a QGIS plugin and QGIS have a fairly "intimate" relationship in terms of "exchanging complex data structures back and forth" (sounds hot :-D ). Then, I found this [3] saying it's possible to use closed external tools, such as file based exchanges from/to external applications. So if they build a GPL-licensed plugin calling a proprietary executable, how external would that latter executable need to be to comply to GPL ? - could it be shipped with the plugin, in the plugin repo ? - if not, could it be dynamically downloaded by the plugin in the background ? - if not, could it be downloaded by the plugin with some kind of user interaction (e.g. copy/paste a link) ? - if not, could it be manually downloaded by the user and placed somewhere ? And then, as far as I understand GPL-2, the requirements only apply when you distribute the software, which means you can keep all the code for yourself. When is it considered that the software is distributed ? - if they distribute it only to users inside their organization ? - if they distribute it only to users from partner organizations ? - if it's not considered distributed when it's done only internally, can they have internal agreements to prevent internal users from distributing the software ? Thank you very much in advance for these clarifications ! And sorry if this is not the best place to ask basic GPL questions... But the topic is very complex, and it seems integrating GPL/propritery software is always an edge case. Maybe we could add some vulgarized information about this in the pyqgis cookbook ? Kind regards, Olivier [1] http://blog.qgis.org/2016/05/29/licensing-requirements-for-qgis-plugins/ [2] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.html#GPLAndPlugins [3] https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/61069
_______________________________________________ QGIS-Developer mailing list [email protected] List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
