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

[Hamono, Chris (DPC)]

I do not know why you are arguing with me because it appears you agreed with what I said. Perhaps it's because you didn't actually read what I said and instead read what you THINK I said.

I provided a link to the GPL licence. And I stated MYC's portal does not appear to use GPL code in which case changing the license would be appropriate.

I also stated that once released under the GPL all code releases under that licence must be honoured but that they could change the licence for future releases.

My statement about the new licence cannot replace the old licence is exactly what you said here...

"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)."

So unless you think your own statement is incorrect your words don't make sense.

But hey I'll clean up my statement for you so you can understand it better because clearly you did not read the paragraph before it.

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

Is that better Alan?

As for linking.

Perhaps you are not aware. There is a special exception for the OS. linking to the OS is allowed under the GPL so NVidia drivers are fine. Commercial software is fine. That exception does not extend to other GPL Software. For example you cannot link the older mysql client to your non GPL application (the new mysql client has exceptions).

This is known as a combined work.
" Linking ABC statically or dynamically with other modules is making a combined work based on ABC. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole combination."
Quoted from.. 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html


MYC are in my opinion in breach of their own licence. I suggest they change it.

Anyone with a current paid for MYC theme, can by virtue of MYC's own licence redistribute it.

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: vtigercrm-developers-bounces at lists.vtigercrm.com [mailto:vtigercrm-developers-bounces at lists.vtigercrm.com] On Behalf Of Alan Lord
Sent: Wednesday, 1 July 2015 4:54 PM
To: vtigercrm-developers at lists.vtigercrm.com
Subject: [Vtigercrm-developers] Licensing Discussion [Was: Re: [NEW!] [RELEASED!] VTIGER 6.X THEME - MOBILE OPTIMIZED - by MYC!!!]

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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