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Bug 159134 - gtksourceview licensing
gtksourceview licensing
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: gtksourceview
Classification: Platform
Component: General
unspecified
Other All
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: GTK Sourceview maintainers
GTK Sourceview maintainers
: 404627 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2004-11-22 23:03 UTC by Benoît Dejean
Modified: 2014-07-21 12:38 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Contributors (extracted from ChangeLog) (4.06 KB, text/plain)
2007-02-24 14:31 UTC, Marco Barisione
  Details
updated list (2.47 KB, text/plain)
2007-02-25 10:35 UTC, Paolo Borelli
  Details
a list (2.10 KB, text/plain)
2007-06-17 19:45 UTC, Yevgen Muntyan
  Details
Bug 159134 - Relicense as LGPL (27.51 KB, patch)
2010-05-19 06:50 UTC, Garrett Regier
committed Details | Review

Description Benoît Dejean 2004-11-22 23:03:22 UTC
according to COPYING, gtksourceview is GPL.

Now looking for /* headers */ in .c:
gtksourceview/gtksourcebuffer.c is GPL
gtksourceview/gtksourceview.c is _L_GPL

so what's the correct license ?

currently, there's a gtksourceview python wrapper in python-gnome, which is
known to be LGPL. If gtksourceview is GPL, it's conflicting.
Comment 1 Paolo Maggi 2004-12-05 11:27:53 UTC
We (the current maintainers) would like to change to the gtksourceview license
to be LGPL. But the original authors used GPL. We should ask all the
contributors the permission for the license change. Is anyone volunteering to
get all the permissions?
Comment 2 Paolo Maggi 2005-02-25 12:08:55 UTC
Is anyone volunteering to get all the permissions?
Comment 3 Jeroen Zwartepoorte 2005-07-25 14:00:36 UTC
You have my permission to change everything to LGPL.
Comment 4 Marco Barisione 2005-08-21 15:44:16 UTC
I can do this. Contact me on irc for details.
Comment 5 Paolo Borelli 2005-08-23 13:11:08 UTC
Since this may get some traction soon, I take the occasion to state that I'm ok
relicensing my (very small) contributions to LGPL.
Comment 6 Paolo Borelli 2007-02-05 18:15:50 UTC
*** Bug 404627 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Marco Barisione 2007-02-24 14:31:00 UTC
Created attachment 83239 [details]
Contributors (extracted from ChangeLog)
Comment 8 Andras Timar 2007-02-24 16:24:26 UTC
You have my permission to change everything to LGPL.
Comment 9 Michael Terry 2007-02-24 16:54:41 UTC
You have my permission to relicense my contributions.
Comment 10 Paul Bolle 2007-02-24 17:59:12 UTC
To be honest, I would prefer the GPL. However, as far as I can remember, my contibution(s) has (have) been trivial. You therefor have my permission to relicense my contribution(s).
Comment 11 Benoît Dejean 2007-02-24 23:26:10 UTC
I would prefer the GPL but as my contribution was so small ...
You have my permission to relicense my contributions.
Comment 12 JP Rosevear 2007-02-25 08:46:03 UTC
You can relicense my small bits to LGPL.
Comment 13 Paolo Borelli 2007-02-25 10:35:02 UTC
Created attachment 83298 [details]
updated list

Here is an updated list without the translators and without the people who already agreed with the change. I also added a small description of the contributions, so that is easier to track if that code has been removed already.

Beside as stated at the start of this bug some files (most actually) already are under LGPL, I am not sure if we need or not to check those contributions.

Some are also oneliner fixes, typos etc... can this be removed, right?

What about lang files?
Comment 14 Vidar Braut Haarr 2007-02-25 18:29:06 UTC
I think I made some very tiny patch that added XUL as a XML type for syntax highlighting a long time ago, so just signing off my OK for that line of code (if I even wrote the patch, maybe I just submitted the bug report about it).
Comment 15 Mohammed Sameer 2007-02-25 22:34:53 UTC
I made a tiny contribution and LGPL is fine with me!
Comment 16 Dave Camp 2007-02-26 18:14:49 UTC
Anything I did can be LGPLed.
Comment 17 Steve Frécinaux 2007-03-04 19:37:12 UTC
I'm fine with LGPL fwiw
Comment 18 Mikael Hermansson 2007-05-18 18:18:17 UTC
I was the first maintainer of gtksourceview and for some years ago someone asked med to change from gpl to lgpl and that was okey for me :-) Maybe some file was forgoten to be changed that time.

But for me it is 100% okey to change all my code to LGPL.
Comment 19 Yevgen Muntyan 2007-06-17 19:45:15 UTC
Created attachment 90162 [details]
a list

Sorry for spam, but this file cost too much time to lose it. This is the list of people who need to be contacted about relicensing lang files. People who agreed to LGPL are not in this list, i.e. it is not the list of all authors/contributors, so if you don't find yourself in the list then it means you are a nice person too :)
Comment 20 Joachim Noreiko 2007-06-17 20:41:28 UTC
You have my permission to relicense my contributions to LGPL.
Comment 21 Evert Verhellen 2007-06-17 21:01:14 UTC
I have 2 questions:

1. Could someone please clarify why a relicensing from GPL to LGPL is preferred or required? If I recall correctly, the FSF recommends against using the LGPL.

2. Could someone please explain why the language files would have to be relicensed as LGPL too? I think they're interpreted at run time, right? So, my IANAL-guess would be that it is legally OK for them to stay GPL while the gtksourceview library itself becomes LGPL?
Comment 22 Michael Witrant 2007-06-17 22:39:29 UTC
You have my permission to relicense my small contribution to LGPL.
Comment 23 Paolo Maggi 2007-06-18 09:29:32 UTC
Evert: we would like to relicense to LGPL because most of the libraries in GNOME are LGPL and since licensing it to GPL was mostly an error on my side (when I started writing code for gtksourceview together with Gustavo, we thought GtkSourceView was LGPL, as you can see from the fact some of the files we wrote have an LGPL header).

About the lang files, since we are not sure how the license stuff works with them, we prefer to be on the safe side and relicense them as LGPL.
Comment 24 Evert Verhellen 2007-06-18 18:50:49 UTC
I grant permission to relicense sql.lang to LGPL.
Comment 25 Jeff Walden (remove +bgo to email) 2007-06-18 20:47:31 UTC
I see your LGPL and will raise you an MIT license.  Down with restrictions on how freely available code can be used!

("I grant permission to relicense all changes I have made in gtksourceview under the LGPL" if it wasn't clear.)
Comment 26 Guillaume Desmottes 2007-06-19 15:43:50 UTC
You have my permission to relicense my contributions.
Comment 27 Ricardo Lenz 2007-06-19 17:26:22 UTC
you have my permisson too!! let us all share and share everything with every one! viva LGPL! :)
Comment 28 Chris Phelps 2007-06-19 18:31:37 UTC
Hey everyone, glad to see this baby is still up and rocking. I am almost positive that the offending SourceBuffer code with the GPL license was there from the very first version written by Mikael Hermansson. He and I talked in the early days about it being LGPL and I thought that change had been made throughout the code. Apparently I was wrong. Anyway, this is me giving permission. I will also try and keep in touch about this, as Editor widgets are still my first love.
Comment 29 Scott Martin 2007-06-20 21:08:39 UTC
You have permission to relicense my contributions to gtksourceview (css.lang and javascript.lang) under the LGPL.
Comment 30 David A Knight 2007-06-21 17:12:30 UTC
Not that i recall which lang file I have contributed to but as I got an email, you have my permission to relicense under LGPL
Comment 31 Andrew Johnson 2009-10-30 22:04:35 UTC
You have permission to relicense anything I have contributed.
Comment 32 Link Dupont 2009-10-30 22:49:15 UTC
Hey I remembered my login! And yes, my permission is also granted, in case it's needed (Andrew pointed out I'm on the list of authors too).
Comment 33 Vaidotas Zemlys 2009-10-31 13:41:59 UTC
I submitted R.lang file. I agree with license change. (Holds also for any other files I submitted, just in case).
Comment 34 Thorbjørn Lindeijer 2009-11-01 11:36:26 UTC
Of course lua.lang, which I originally submitted, may also be used under LGPL. The only reason it was GPL is because the other language files were GPL anyway.
Comment 35 Patryk Zawadzki 2009-11-02 14:53:56 UTC
I hereby grant permission to relicense all my contributions to any license you find suitable (wither now or in the future).
Comment 36 Francesco Gigli 2009-11-02 15:48:55 UTC
LGPL is fine for me.

You have my permission to relicense php.lang (and ldif.lang if it's still around) to LGPL.

Also you can update my mail address to jaramir@slack.it (@libero.it is no longer operative).

Happy Hacking!
Comment 37 thelema 2009-11-02 23:51:18 UTC
You have my permission to use my contributions under LGPL.  

Eric Norige <thelema@swbell.net> (also <thelema314@gmail.com>)
Comment 38 Antonio Ognio 2010-05-18 00:45:16 UTC
I give my permission to change the license of my contributions to gtksourceview from the GPL to the LGPL.
Comment 39 chuchiperriman 2010-05-18 11:49:20 UTC
I give my permission to change the license of my contributions to gtksourceview
to LGPL.
Comment 40 Garrett Regier 2010-05-19 06:50:49 UTC
Created attachment 161407 [details] [review]
Bug 159134 - Relicense as LGPL

The only files that still have GPL are:
    gseal-gtk-compat.h
    pascal.lang
    php.lang
    ruby.lang

I emailed gbauman@gmail.com and received a "The email account that you tried to reach does not exist" error.
Comment 41 Ignacio Casal Quinteiro (nacho) 2010-05-19 07:52:11 UTC
Review of attachment 161407 [details] [review]:

looks good
Comment 42 Ignacio Casal Quinteiro (nacho) 2010-05-19 11:49:28 UTC
BTW the gseal-gtk-compat.h is already LGPL
Comment 43 Garrett Regier 2010-05-20 06:44:29 UTC
@nacho: turns out that gseal-gtk-compat.h was missing a Lesser so my search found it, this has been fixed.
Comment 44 Christopher Blay 2013-03-29 18:41:50 UTC
I give my permission to change the license of my contributions to gtksourceview
to LGPL.
Comment 45 Sébastien Wilmet 2013-03-29 20:38:39 UTC
To close this bug, here are the missing authors:

Thierry Moisan (pascal.lang)
Rowan Lewis (php.lang)
Archit Baweja (ruby.lang)
Gabriel Bauman (ruby.lang)
Jesse van den Kieboom (ruby.lang)
Comment 46 Archit Baweja 2013-03-29 20:48:55 UTC
I give my permission to change the license of my contributions to gtksourceview, to LGPL.
Comment 47 Gabriel Bauman 2013-03-29 21:26:26 UTC
You have my permission to relicense my gtksourceview contributions to LGPL.
Comment 48 jessevdk@gmail.com 2013-04-03 14:42:32 UTC
I give you my permission to change the license of my contributions in gtksourceview to LGPL
Comment 50 Thomas Andersen 2013-06-14 08:57:37 UTC
I dug into the history for pascel.lang before the file was moved. The only commit I could find for Thierry Moisan is a trivial one that adds a single ','.

Bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150477
Commit: https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/commit/gtksourceview/language-specs/pascal.lang?id=1de8a7f98cec8b57acda316233e076562204837c
Comment 51 Thomas Andersen 2013-06-14 09:35:56 UTC
The contribution from Rowan Lewis was in this bug:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150396

From the suggested changes in that bug only the part of adding 6 missing keywords was applied:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/commit/gtksourceview/language-specs/php.lang?id=837bc65f31435571942aa9d65a4e5c5ead7c8db6

Decimal highlighting was added later in a different form and author:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/commit/gtksourceview/language-specs/php.lang?id=a559a0b2b8c1f15694ff84aea810f683deff1e93
Comment 52 Sébastien Wilmet 2013-11-16 17:58:50 UTC
Thierry Moisan accepts to relicense his contributions to GtkSourceView from GPL to LGPL:
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gedit-list/2013-November/msg00013.html

One remaining person: Rowan Lewis (php.lang)
Comment 53 James 2013-11-16 18:08:27 UTC
I assume you're choosing the LGPL v3+ right ?
Comment 54 Sébastien Wilmet 2013-11-16 18:14:36 UTC
No, LGPL v2+ for now. We may relicense to LGPL v3+ or v4+ in the future. I don't know why we still keep the version 2, there should maybe be a GNOME goal about migrating to GPL and LGPL v3+ for all GNOME softwares (there was probably a debate about this when the GPL 3 was released, and probably some developers didn't agree, like Linus for the kernel).
Comment 55 James 2013-11-16 18:16:49 UTC
(In reply to comment #54)
> No, LGPL v2+ for now. We may relicense to LGPL v3+ or v4+ in the future.
It seems to me, if we're moving away from the GPL, at least move to a current version of the LGPL.

> I
> don't know why we still keep the version 2, there should maybe be a GNOME goal
> about migrating to GPL and LGPL v3+ for all GNOME softwares (there was probably
> a debate about this when the GPL 3 was released, and probably some developers
> didn't agree, like Linus for the kernel).
IIRC, Linus ultimately stated that it was a mistake, and they should have gone with v3+. In any case, we should do what's best for software freedom.
Comment 56 Carnë Draug 2013-11-16 18:32:37 UTC
I think that if the license choosen is LGPLv2+, you would be free to upgrade it to LGPLv3+ at your discretion. I mean, you have the source which was under LGPLv2+ which says

"you can redistribute it [...] under the terms of the GNU General Public License [..] , either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version."

Shouldn't this mean that the copyright owner gives you the right to distribute under LGPLv3+ if you want?
Comment 57 James 2013-11-16 18:39:22 UTC
(In reply to comment #56)
> I think that if the license choosen is LGPLv2+, you would be free to upgrade it
> to LGPLv3+ at your discretion. I mean, you have the source which was under
> LGPLv2+ which says
> 
> "you can redistribute it [...] under the terms of the GNU General Public
> License [..] , either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
> version."
> 
> Shouldn't this mean that the copyright owner gives you the right to distribute
> under LGPLv3+ if you want?

I don't want to get into a licensing argument with you. You have the problem backwards. It's not that _i_ can't upgrade to LGPL3+, it's that by choosing LGPL 3+ it ensures the license can't be downgraded to v2 by other parties. This means we as a community benefit from the added protections and compatibilities of LGPL3+.
Comment 58 Sébastien Wilmet 2014-07-21 12:38:47 UTC
(In reply to comment #51)
> The contribution from Rowan Lewis was in this bug:
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=150396
> 
> From the suggested changes in that bug only the part of adding 6 missing
> keywords was applied:
> https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/commit/gtksourceview/language-specs/php.lang?id=837bc65f31435571942aa9d65a4e5c5ead7c8db6

For such a small change the copyright doesn't really hold. It is generally explained in documents describing how to apply the GPL. For example in the GNU Coding Standards:

"You don’t need papers for changes of a few lines here or there, since they are not significant for copyright purposes."

http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html

So this bug is finally fixed:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/commit/?id=c487e201cf7c559b171b0b9214872a27931d29e0

https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/commit/?id=4a3a811719a68bde90c96619e8938c5285a5f15d

https://git.gnome.org/browse/gtksourceview/commit/?id=c208f4d34bb38ae3ae4cc65c4a329f2d6fe2f910