Re: [Savannah-hackers] submission of Incubus Data Modeler - savannah.nongnu.org

[Sylvain Beucler]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 08:07:09PM -0300, Eric Jardim wrote:
> > RMS said that people at the FSF are willing to ask this, and that
> > Trolltech might agree.
> > 
> > Do you want us to ask Trolltech?
> 
> Sure, why not? But let me speak some words here.
> 
> 1 - I really did not noticed that the code that I took from Qt was
> GPLv2 only. You guys have "eagle eyes". But for me, I do not think
> this is a serious problem. It is free software anyway.

Indeed. However, GPLv2-only has disadvantages. I prefer to point you
to our official position on the subject:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#VersionTwoOrLater

We are having a discussion to determine whether code released under
the GPL version 2 only should be accepted at Savannah or not. I will
keep you informed.


> 2 - Another thing to keep in mind is that this incubus version is just
> a prototype, so many parts of the code should be abandonned or
> drastically modified. So, I do not even know if that piece of code
> will be really necessary on upcoming versions.
> 
> 3 - The portions of code that I borrowed from Qt corresponds exactly
> with some features that were released on versions 3.2 and 3.3 of Qt,
> that I wanted to include in my code to be compatible with Qt 3.1. In
> other words, instead of doing all that job, I could require newer
> versions of Qt, what should be sad news for people that use older
> versions.

A solution could then be to create a version that does not include
GPLv2-only code.

You could either use another code, or temporarily require a newest
version of Qt until you find a way to be able to use previous
versions.


> Well... I want to thank you to the great job you are doing and I would
> like to hear from you what are the benefits (in pure free software
> terms) to my project to be hosted on Savannah. I hope you understood
> this question, because I do not think that my English is that good :)

I am not sure to understand your question indeed. I will try to answer
anyway.

Well, I can tell you that some of the goals of Savannah is to only
provide software that does not have proprietary dependencies, runs
primarily on a free operating system (even if complementary ports to
proprietary OSes are fine), and is released under a license compatible
with the GNU GPL (GPLv2-only code currently being in a gray area).

Users who see your project is hosted at Savannah hence know that you
are complying with these criteria, and can feel completely free to use
your project.

-- 
Sylvain