[Qgis-psc] QGIS licence (was: QGIS on iOS was QGIS for Mobile (Android))

[Even Rouault]

> - it would be possible to relicense QGIS and what would be involved in
> doing so (including which other projects have done this and how they
> went about it)

That's the hardest part. You have to go through the whole code base, look at 
the history of changes to identify if a line of code is subject to copyright 
law (some trivial changes might not qualify as copyrighted material. Like if 
the last committer has done whitespace changes, he's clearly not the copyright 
holder of the modified lines), and if it is copyrighted find who are the 
copyright holder(s). The individual who committed the change might not be the 
copyright holder. If he's an employee, the copyright holder is generally the 
employer. For independant developers, depending on the arrangment with their 
client, they might be the copyright holders, or the client might be. Once 
identified, ask them if they want to use the relicense under the new license 
(and/or sign a CLA to avoid such a later move). If they don't, delete the code 
and replace it. 
Something that is doable when Openstreetmap changed their license, because a 
number of entries in the database are independant, so the database remains 
usable without some records, but deleting a line of code, in the core 
especially, is something not so easy for software...

https://opensource.guide/legal/#what-if-i-want-to-change-the-license-of-my-project

Actually, as all of this is about legal, and legal is not an exact science, 
but an assessment on which risks you take by doing or not doing something, an 
entity (QGIS.org ?) could decide, after checking with most of the prominent 
copyright holders that they are OK and a lot of publicity about the planned 
move letting enough time to objecters to object, to unilateraly change the 
license of the code, and deal with potential subsequent litigations of unhappy 
contributor holders, hoping there won't be any... 

http://www.catb.org/~esr/Licensing-HOWTO.html#changing from Eric S. Raymond 
has an interesting paragraph "If no other copyright holder could be harmed by 
the change" which open the door to some legal license changes.

-- 
Spatialys - Geospatial professional services
http://www.spatialys.com