[Qgis-psc] Proposal that QGIS.ORG will become a member of the OpenDesign Alliance

[Sandro Santilli]

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 11:44:53AM +0100, Andreas Neumann wrote:

> The projects LibreCAD, FreeCAD, Blender, Inkscape would like to use
> LibreDWG or LibDWG. They are all GPLv2. They are not GPLv2 or higher
> like QGIS. So QGIS is in a slightly better situation compared to the
> other libre graphics projects.

FreeCAD is LGPL2+:
 http://freecadweb.org/wiki/?title=Licence#Licences_used_in_FreeCAD
 https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/blob/master/README.md

LibreCAD contains a mix of GPL2, GPL2+ and GPL3:
 https://github.com/LibreCAD/LibreCAD/blob/master/LICENSE
 From what I undersatand it is a fork of QCAD whose latest
 community edition is GPL3.

Blender is GPL2+:
 https://www.blender.org/about/license/
 It is explicitly mentioned on that page that a full component version
 can be distributed cleanly under GPL3

Inkscape license isn't very clear. I've found mentions of its codebase
containing some GPL3 but they say the code is GPL2.

> If QGIS.ORG (or other QGIS users) would invest into LibreDWG/LibDWG,
> they have to understand that they are the only funding source of the
> library - which is a very high-risk I would say. They would also be
> the only professional user of the library - which is also very
> risky.

There's an ongoing funding drive that reached 133k USD so far,
according to the official homepage for the project.
Also, it looks like GRASS uses it for v.in.redwg, so it is not
a completely unknown pieace of software.

> In summary, I am not against using LibreDWG - but I think the risk
> to invest into it and use it - as the only project is really high.
> It is also a (financial) burden for the future as we would have to
> make sure that it still works with future DWG file format versions.
> Again, if I had 500k Euros at hand, it would be a different
> discussion - but it would still be risky.
> 
> If we want to seriously push a Teigha alternative, I would team up
> with LibreGraphics projects like the above mentioned projects and
> make sure the license is GPL v2+. This would allow us to spread risk
> and financial burden. But it would also mean that we won't have CAD
> support in QGIS in 2016 - as I assume it will take much longer to
> come up with an alternative to Teigha, which was actively and
> continuously developed for many years, by several developers.

None of which can distribute the product of their work, nor show
others how's done... 

I avoid mentioning "CAD support" as we're really talking
about a specific format here, not about "CAD" in general.

--strk;