[Vtigercrm-developers] Licensing Discussion [Was: Re: [NEW!] [RELEASED!] VTIGER 6.X THEME - MOBILE OPTIMIZED - by MYC!!!]

Alan Lord alanslists at gmail.com
Wed Jul 1 07:24:06 GMT 2015


On 01/07/15 02:44, Hamono, Chris (DPC) wrote:
> Sorry Alan you are mistaken
>
> vtiger uses parts which are GPL. GPL insists that if you use one line of code from it the GPL extends to all code.

Where exactly is the GPL code and how is it being used? I just grepped 
the source tree and everything I saw was either LGPL (big difference) or 
the library says it's dual (or more) licensed so the user can decide to 
use GPL or MPL or whatever the choices are...

> That's the entire purpose of the GPL you can't pick and choose your interpretation, if some of the code is GPL and your code uses it (even by linking) then your code MUST be released under the terms of the GPL. It is a quite restrictive license and I have argued against its use in the past.

GPL is a strong copyleft license that is true. If anything in vtiger 
that is considered core and not just connected by a "clean API" is GPL 
then the whole of vtiger must be GPL. *BUT* "linking" has never really 
been properly defined (think nvidia blobs inside the Linux Kernel.... 
Those are most certainly NOT GPL).

> If that's the case then the MYC group only needs to change the portal license to their own licence and ther will no longer be an issue. However they cannot change it retrospectivally. This means because they stated the portal is GPL so must the existing themes be!

The owner/copyright holder of any of _their_ _own_ code can change the 
license whenever they like. They can't "take back" an old version if it 
was GPL and someone else has a copy obviously, but they can release new 
versions under a different license. (Look at Alfresco, OpenOffice, 
Odoo... There are countless examples of licenses being changed by the 
copyright holder).

> It's a complicated area my understanding is one cannot create a licence which overrules a previous license.

It is a complicated area but that statement is simply not correct.

Al




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