GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 692425
License description is unclear
Last modified: 2017-12-13 17:57:58 UTC
Some places of the RSVG website claim the license is GPL, while the source code says LGPL: http://developer.gnome.org/rsvg/2.36/ http://git.gnome.org/browse/librsvg/tree/rsvg-base.c I grepped through the source code, and it appears that the headers of most files specify LGPL. Only some tests claim GPL. Furthermore, the license in the documentation seems to have been changed without any kind of announcement by this commit on 2010-06-22: http://git.gnome.org/browse/librsvg/commit/doc?id=14f3d4cef8d13e073108a5359524118099b2ac9b So I would like a clarification on the current license of librsvg. Is it: 1) Library itself LGPL, tests and documentation GPL. 2) Library completely GPL after 2010-06-22, LGPL before it. 3) Something else? Personally I would much prefer LGPL for the library proper. Otherwise I may have to fork an old version for use with our GPL-incompatible program.
Looks like the correct answer is 1). No confirmation though. I missed two important words in the license given in the documentation: http://developer.gnome.org/rsvg/2.36/ "Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify ***this document*** under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence" So it only declares the documentation license and not the library license. It would still be very nice if the library README could clearly state the license for the whole library.
You're right, the manual should make it clear that the GPL is the manual's licence (I copied some GPL template stuff from elsewhere, which is combined with the LGPL gtk-doc comments from the source, making the aggregate GPL) and that the library itself is LGPL.
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