License Issue

[Waldemar Bautista]

Hello,

I was poking around CI's source repository and I just noticed that
they have changed CI's license around 5 months ago [1] from their own
license to Open Software License 3.0 which is incompatible with GPL
[2, 3]. And as stated in [3], our releases since the first one are
also incompatible with GPL. This calls for an immediate action.

I think we have two options:
A. Change the Halalan license to one of the licenses listed at [4].
Take note that we rely heavily on jQuery which is dual-license (GPL
and MIT).
B. Change to a framework that is compatible with GPL.

I vote for A since it is easier to do. Thoughts?

[1] https://github.com/EllisLab/CodeIgniter/commits/develop/license.txt
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OSL
[3] http://codeigniter.com/license_faq.html#wait-why-can-t-i-include-gpl-code-with-codeigniter
[4] http://codeigniter.com/license_faq.html#can-i-include-other-freely-licensed-software-in-my-distributions

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Waldemar Amado Bautista

[Waldemar Bautista]

By the way, I suggest that we use the MIT License since jQuery also uses this.

Please vote so that we can release 1.6.0 this week. Thanks.

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Waldemar Amado Bautista

[Rystraum Gamonez]

Agrees with using MIT since it's a very simple license.

Rystraum Fabe Gamonez

--
Waldemar Amado Bautista

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[Mary Macapagal]

Does not know anything about licenses.

Will trust UnPLUG members' judgement. :D

[Rystraum Gamonez]

Were there changes to CI core in Halalan? I think the license issue only applies to code that changes core CI files so if we're not doing anything to CI core, we don't have to change our license.

Rystraum Fabe Gamonez

[Waldemar Bautista]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 9:42 PM, Rystraum Gamonez <ryst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Were there changes to CI core in Halalan? I think the license issue only
> applies to code that changes core CI files so if we're not doing anything to
> CI core, we don't have to change our license.

There are no changes in the core. But we do have to change the
license since we are distributing Halalan as CI (their own license
then, OSL 3.0 now) + some code (GPLv3). My understanding of the
situation is that we cannot distribute Halalan as GPLv3 since it
contains a GPL-incompatible license. We can work around this by
distributing only the application folder and asking users to download
CI themselves and copying over the application folder. I may be wrong
so feedback from other people here is very much appreciated. We can
also take this discussion to UnPLUG if we need more enlightenment.

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Waldemar Amado Bautista

[Rystraum Gamonez]

My interpretation is that even though we're bundling Halalan (the app folder) and CI, it's not direct linking. AFAIK, GPL code can call non-GPL libraries without much trouble (except if said library applies its own license on apps that call it) but the reverse is not true. And since the source code is in essence part of the download, we're able to assign licenses down to the file level (if we want to.)

Yes, we should probably consult higher powers.

Rystraum Fabe Gamonez

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Waldemar Amado Bautista

[Mary Macapagal]

Will this help?

http://ellislab.com/blog/comments/codeigniter_osl_3.0_compliance_examples

[Waldemar Bautista]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 11:21 PM, Mary Macapagal
<mary.ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Will this help?
>
> http://ellislab.com/blog/comments/codeigniter_osl_3.0_compliance_examples

Also http://ellislab.com/blog/comments/gpl_or_not_to_gpl.

"
The CodeIgniter license is not compatible with the GPL. We’re not
talking about OSL 3.0 here, we are talking about the simple license we
have used for CodeIgniter from the very beginning. §5 alone:

Products derived from the Software must include an acknowledgment
that they are derived from CodeIgniter in their documentation and/or
other materials provided with the distribution.

The GPL does not allow any additional restrictions beyond those placed
in the GPL itself. The FSF refers to clauses like the above as an
"obnoxious…advertising clause".
"

It looks like we can't license Halalan with GPLv3 because of the above
provision of CI's original license.

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Waldemar Amado Bautista

[Waldemar Bautista]

Hello,

Since I like to release 1.6.0 ASAP, I suggest we just release it as
usual (under GPLv3) then just the change the license to MIT for 2.x.x
onwards.

If that's okay, then let's release 1.6.0 on Saturday or Sunday.

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Waldemar Amado Bautista