[postgis-tickets] [PostGIS] #2515: change licensing to GPL2+

[PostGIS]

#2515: change licensing to GPL2+
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 Reporter:  strk     |       Owner:  pramsey
     Type:  task     |      Status:  new    
 Priority:  medium   |   Milestone:         
Component:  postgis  |     Version:  2.0.x  
 Keywords:           |  
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Comment(by strk):

 I've run a grep for copyright holders in the whole code base.
 Here it is:

 Individuals:
  Andrea Peri <aperi2007 at gmail.com>
  Paul Ramsey <pramsey at cleverelephant.ca>
  Regina Obe <lr at pcorp.us>
  Sandro Santilli <strk at keybit.net>
  Mark Cave-Ayland <mark.cave-ayland at siriusit.co.uk>
  Olivier Courtin <olivier.courtin at oslandia.com>
  Nicklas Avén <nicklas.aven at jordogskog.no>
  J Smith <dark.panda at gmail.com>
  David Skea <David.Skea at gov.bc.ca>
  Kashif Rasul <kashif.rasul at gmail.com>

 Companies:
  Arrival 3D
  Corporacion Autonoma Regional de Santander
  OpenGeo.org
  Oslandia <infos at oslandia.com>
  Refractions Research Inc.

 Irrelevant:
  Thamer Alharbash -- only holds (C) on MIT-like licensed file
  OSGeo -- only holds (C) in libpgcommon/common.h, which is 3 include lines

 I shall notice that NONE of the copyright headers explicitly specify a
 version for the license, but rather point to a COPYING file:
 {{{
  * This is free software; you can redistribute and/or modify it under
  * the terms of the GNU General Public Licence. See the COPYING file.
 }}}

 According to the GPLv2, which is what we find in the COPYING file, the
 absence of an explicit version means that the work can be distributed with
 _any_ version of the GPL licenses.
 Here's the pointer:
 https://github.com/postgis/postgis/blob/svn-trunk/COPYING#L246

 So I believe we don't really need to change license, but also there should
 be no problem in releasing a composite work as GPLv3 (ie: there's no
 "version 2 only" specification anywhere).

 We would need to get permission to make GPLv3 the _minimum_ version
 allowed.
 But I guess it'll become automatic as time goes by (for SFCGAL dependency
 or raster or whatever).

 See also #2514

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/2515#comment:7>
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