Decision process on possible switch to LGPL

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Roger Fujii wrote:

> Dan Kegel <dank at kegel.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Who has to decide what in order for the Wine project
> > to switch to the LGPL?
> 
> I believe the process involves all prior contributors allowing this, or
> have the non-LGPL code rewritten and that work be LGPLed.  Pending on the
> number of authors, the effort can be non-trivial.  Look at the license
> change discussions for mozilla and kde if you want to get the grasp of what
> is required.

Sorry, but you do not understand the current Wine licence. Alexandre can
simply take the current code base and say: 'from now on, the entire tree I
maintain is LGPL'. If this is harmful, somebody else can take the same
tree and say 'mine is still BSD-licenced'. I doubt that will happen
though.


> > Could it be as simple as the wine cvs tree accepting LGPL'd contributions
> > along with old-license contributions?
> 
> Not if you want a "pure" LGPL distribution.

False. See above.

>  
> > Or need one go so far as requiring all new contributions to the cvs
> > tree be under the LGPL?
> 
> even further.

False. People can continue to submit code that's BSD-licenced. It will
turn LGPL the moment it's applied to the tree.


Remember: any BSD-lincenced code can be used in LGPLed code, but not the
other way around. If BSD-lincenced code is used in LGPLed code, it becomes
LGPLed automatically, by the magic of the LGPL.

-- 
Dimi.