On Mon, 29 Oct 2018 at 01:22, Tim Sutton <[email protected]> wrote: > One (probably unpopular and definitely tedious if not impossible) option > might be for us to add an exception to the GPL license used for QGIS allowing > its distriibuton via app stores, get every committer who has code in the > current codebase to agree to the exception and build iOS packages off that. > Though that would still leave a large issue of the dependent libraries that > we use that are under GPL where the latter approach is even less feasible. So > while I am excited at the idea of running QGIS on my iPad / iPhone I am > wondering if this is a dead-end excursion in terms of making QGS generally > available on iOS? >
This is opening a complete can of worms... but I've wondered for a while if we need to set up a contributor agreement which grants copyright of code to the QGIS organisation, so that we have the flexibility to relicense QGIS in future if (and ONLY IF!!) required***. Currently we are stuck with the GPLv2 or later license forever, but I can definitely see a time when we'd like to drop the "v2" and move to a pure "v3 or greater" license, or even relicense under something more permissive like the MIT license. I see this "stuck with the GPLv2 license FOREVER AND EVER" as a potential risk to the project. There's many other open source licenses to choose from, including some which MAY be much better to suited for the project. But I feel confident that with the right approach, careful wording, and legal fine print we could, at this stage of the project, get agreement from all current contributors to a copyright transfer agreement. So I'd like us to at least have a nice discussion about whether this is a good idea or not. Nyall *** Hey Trolly mcTrollface: I'm not ever saying QGIS should go closed source. Go take your annoying breed of community troublemaking elsewhere and let us keep this discussion civil and based on facts only. _______________________________________________ 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
