[Qgis-developer] What's your view on QGIS plugins that connect to non-GPL software?

[Tim Sutton]

Hi

> On 10 Sep 2015, at 23:23, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
> 
> Il 10/09/2015 17:39, Crispin Cooper ha scritto:
>> Hi Vincent, thank you for your reply.
>> 
>> The QGIS plugin would not be essential to the external process as sDNA works on its own anyway.  The external process would however be essential to the QGIS plugin.
>> 
>> Is there any sort of official position on this, e.g. from the steering committee?
> 
> Hi,
> I do not think we have an official position: we stick to the GPL
> licence. I admit that the interpretation may be sometimes tricky, but in
> these case it's only a lawyer (or better a judge) that can give a
> definite answer.
> In general I thin Vincent has outlined the prevailing interpretation.

Yes the linking and licensing restrictions of GPL comes up many time but can be solved in edge cases - you might want to look at the (now defunct) SQLAnywhere plugin that was contributed (you will need to look back in Git history to find it)…they managed to find a way to deal with creating a GPL stubb that creates a socket connection to their proprietary db backend if I recall correctly. Marco Hugentobler has often said in response to these kind of questions (and I agree) that the GPL creates a platform that encourages sharing in two directions and when you weigh up the license against others in those simple terms it still seems like a good choice even if in some edge cases it actually means we lose potentially interesting contributions.

Regards

Tim


> All the best.
> 
> --
> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
> QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html
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—





Tim Sutton

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