[Qgis-developer] Mixing GPL-2 & GPL-3 code in QGIS (official Debian package rejected by FTP master)

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Bas,

On Sat, 28. Feb 2015 at 19:21:23 +0100, Sebastiaan Couwenberg wrote:
> The dxf2shp_converter plugin contains code under GPL-2 (v2 only), GPL-2+
> (v2 or later), MIT, LGPL-2+ and commercial licenses. This is documented
> in the debian/copyright file as follows:
> 

> Files: src/plugins/dxf2shp_converter/getInsertions.h
> Copyright: Christopher Michaelis
> License: GPL-2
> 
> Files: src/plugins/dxf2shp_converter/getInsertions.cpp
> Copyright: Christopher Michaelis
> License: GPL-2+

> Files: src/plugins/dxf2shp_converter/shapelib-1.2.10/*
> Copyright: 1999, 2001-2002, Frank Warmerdam
> License: MIT or LGPL-2+
> 
> Files: src/plugins/dxf2shp_converter/dxflib/src/*
> Copyright: 2001-2003, RibbonSoft
>                 2001, Robert J. Campbell Jr
> License: GPL-2 or dxflib-Commercial-License

The GPL-2 code in dxf2shp can be removed.  And the dxf2shp lib can be upgraded
to 3.7.5 that is licensed under GPL-2+.   The getInsertions code is trivial and
AFAICT the handling is wrong anyway - the content of a block is only inserted
once at the location of the first insert instead of repeatedly on every
location of the inserts.   It's probably better to handle inserts similar to
the texts.

After that there's not GPL-2 only code in QGIS, right?

> Removing the dxf2shp_converter plugin from QGIS would get rid of the
> problematic GPL-2 licensed works, but the inclusion of GPL-3+ works
> still upgrades the GPL-2+ license for QGIS to GPL-3+.

Would that be a problem?  In that case Debian is free to redistribute.

 
> Excluding the GPL-3+ resources doesn't look very problematic at first
> glance, but I expect the removal of libpal to cause more breakage.

That would kill labeling.


> Besides the GPL-2/GPL-3 issue, one of the resources also has problematic
> license terms:

> Files: resources/cpt-city-qgis-min/es/*
> Copyright: 2008, ElvenSword (http://elvensword.deviantart.com/)
> Comment: Credit requested for use, required for distribution
> License: ElvenSword

Looks like there are more with non-free license and also stuff
that is GPL-2 only.  I suppose we can remove all of those too.
Etienne?



Jürgen

-- 
Jürgen E. Fischer           norBIT GmbH             Tel. +49-4931-918175-31
Dipl.-Inf. (FH)             Rheinstraße 13          Fax. +49-4931-918175-50
Software Engineer           D-26506 Norden             http://www.norbit.de
QGIS release manager (PSC)  Germany                    IRC: jef on FreeNode                         
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