[Qgis-developer] Plugin licence

[Vincent Picavet (ml)]

Hi,

On 25/05/2016 12:39, Even Rouault wrote:
[..]
> <my ow opinion, not pretending this is the project one>
> 
> Technically you could licence the plugin with any license you want, but as 
> soon you execute it against QGIS, it must be compatible of GPL v2+, since it 
> is a derived work of QGIS GPLv2 code, and thus it must convey the same rights 
> and obligations offered and constrained by the GPLv2 license.
> So you could also licence it under X/MIT, BSD 2/3 clauses or which ever other 
> free licences that are compatible with GPLv2+.
> It cannot be under a proprietary license, because GPLv2 would impose to have 
> access to the source code.
> 
> The only cases where it makes sense in practice to have a plugin under a 
> permissive license are :
> - imagine that someone would reimplement a QGIS alternative that would have 
> the same API as QGIS but would be more permissively licensed, then it could 
> make sense to have your plugin under that permissive license.
> - a more reasonable use case would be a plugin that would be compatible of 
> QGIS and another proprietary GIS through some abstraction layer of their 
> different APIs. The core of your plugin could then be permissively licensed to 
> be compatible of both licensing models.
> 
> </my ow opinion, not pretending this is the project one>

I do agree with this analysis.

Note that as for the Nvidia case mentionned, the Linux kernel has an
exception to GPL for proprietary modules. Not sure it plays a role on
the issue you mentionned, but it may be a strong difference with other
software which do not have this exception.

Vincent



> 
>>
>> On Wed, 25 May 2016 8:01 pm Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
>>> Il 25/05/2016 11:42, Tom Chadwin ha scritto:
>>>> I guess I am just sceptical that GPL's requirement for GPL licensing of
>>>> a product, purely by virtue of importing the first product as a
>>>> library, is likely to hold much legal weight.
>>>
>>> We asked for legal advice, and that was the official response.
>>> All the best.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
>>> QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html
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>