License incompatibility

[Bastian Germann]

Hi,

11 months ago I started the thread https://groups.google.com/g/thg-dev/c/AYFxHk5aLKg about
TortoiseHg having an incompatible license with PyQt5 that it is based on.

I want to remind you about that and note that Debian's tortoisehg package is being removed today
from their testing distribution because of that https://bugs.debian.org/993967 (and another issue).

I had a stab at converting the code to PySide2/PySide6, which is blocked by no equivalent
replacement existing for the QScintilla component: https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/PYSIDE-1121. I do
not think it is reasonable to go that route, so relicensing seems to be the best option if nobody
comes up with a reimplementation of your QScintilla widgets with some other editor component.

For a relicensing process, I suggest to start by requiring all new contribution to be
GPL-2.0-or-later compatible, so you do not have to look at them when you start asking contributors
to agree to adding the "or later" to their code.

Thanks,
Bastian

[Antonio Muci]

Hi,

it would be a pity if TortoiseHg would be dropped from Debian.

In his message from 2020-11-01
(https://groups.google.com/g/thg-dev/c/AYFxHk5aLKg/m/pOcYgqByAwAJ), Yuya
built a tentative list of the GPLv2 only files in TortoiseHg.

I have done it again today against the current stable version (5.9.1)
and manually went through the results.

This is a brief of what I found:

- 73 problematic files that are under GPLv2
- 8 Files that are under GPL, but with no version indication
- 6 Files without any license (including 3 empty __init__.py)
- 8 Files that are already GPLv2 or later

Back in 2020, Angel Ezquerra and Student T have already agreed to
relicensing their work. I would not mind doing the same for my small
part. But how to proceed with all the other authors?

I hope we find a way to go on with relicensing TortoiseHg.

Antonio





=============

Details:

Command (borrowed from Yuya) used to extract the candidate list:
   hg files --rev 5.9.1 'set:(tortoisehg/**/*.py or thg) and not
grep("or any later version")'

Problematic files that are under GPLv2 (73):
thg
tortoisehg/hgqt/about.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/archive.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/backout.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/bisect.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/bookmark.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/branchop.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/clone.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/close_branch.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/cmdcore.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/cmdui.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/commit.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/compress.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/csinfo.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/cslist.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/customtools.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/filectxactions.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/filedata.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/fileview.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/graft.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/grep.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/guess.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/hgemail.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/hgignore.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/hginit.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/htmldelegate.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/htmlui.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/lexers.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/matching.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/merge.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/messageentry.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/p4pending.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/phabreview.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/pick.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/postreview.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/purge.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/qdelete.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/qfold.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/qtapp.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/quickop.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/rebase.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/rename.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/resolve.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/revert.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/revset.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/run.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/serve.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/settings.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/sign.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/status.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/tag.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/thgimport.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/thgstrip.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/topic.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/update.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/updatecheck.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/visdiff.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/wctxcleaner.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/webconf.py
tortoisehg/util/cachethg.py
tortoisehg/util/debugthg.py
tortoisehg/util/hglib.py
tortoisehg/util/hgversion.py
tortoisehg/util/i18n.py
tortoisehg/util/menuthg.py
tortoisehg/util/obsoleteutil.py
tortoisehg/util/partialcommit.py
tortoisehg/util/paths.py
tortoisehg/util/shlib.py
tortoisehg/util/thgstatus.py
tortoisehg/util/thread2.py
tortoisehg/util/typelib.py
tortoisehg/util/version.py

Files that are under GPL, but with no version indication (8):
tortoisehg/hgqt/chunks.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/rejects.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/repofilter.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/repowidget.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/revdetails.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/revpanel.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/shelve.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/workbench.py

Files without any license (the __init__.py are empty) (6):
tortoisehg/__init__.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/__init__.py
tortoisehg/util/__init__.py
tortoisehg/util/bugtraq.py
tortoisehg/util/editor.py
tortoisehg/util/terminal.py

Files that are already GPLv2 or later (8):
tortoisehg/hgqt/blockmatcher.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/filedialogs.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/filelistview.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/graph.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/graphopt.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/manifestmodel.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/repomodel.py
tortoisehg/hgqt/repoview.py

[Mathias De Maré]

On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 4:08 PM 'Antonio Muci' via TortoiseHg Developers <thg...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi,

it would be a pity if TortoiseHg would be dropped from Debian.

In his message from 2020-11-01
(https://groups.google.com/g/thg-dev/c/AYFxHk5aLKg/m/pOcYgqByAwAJ), Yuya
built a tentative list of the GPLv2 only files in TortoiseHg.

I have done it again today against the current stable version (5.9.1)
and manually went through the results.

This is a brief of what I found:

- 73 problematic files that are under GPLv2
- 8 Files that are under GPL, but with no version indication
- 6 Files without any license (including 3 empty __init__.py)
- 8 Files that are already GPLv2 or later

Back in 2020, Angel Ezquerra and Student T have already agreed to
relicensing their work. I would not mind doing the same for my small
part. But how to proceed with all the other authors?

There's apparently a wiki overview of relicensing that happened in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_relicensing

An interesting one is mpv: " In June 2015 mpv started the relicensation process of the project's GPL licensed source code for improved license compatibility under LGPLv2 by getting consent from the majority (95%+) of the contributing developers.^[41] In August 2016 approx. 90% of the authors could be reached and consented. In October 2017 the switch was finalized."

See the start of their switch: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033

And the end: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033#issuecomment-335511905

Perhaps we should follow a similar approach? Then the question is: do we keep an overview of authors that need to give permission in the repository itself, or in a heptapod ticket?

Regarding the file overview, it sounds like it might be good to change the top-level COPYING file (although LICENSE might be a better name) to indicate that new contributions are GPLv2 or later. The individual files (once GPLv2+) should perhaps not contain a separate license indication?

Greetings,

Mathias

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[Yuya Nishihara]

On Thu, 7 Oct 2021 09:05:51 +0200, Mathias De Maré wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 4:08 PM 'Antonio Muci' via TortoiseHg Developers <
> thg...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
> > it would be a pity if TortoiseHg would be dropped from Debian.
> >
> > In his message from 2020-11-01
> > (https://groups.google.com/g/thg-dev/c/AYFxHk5aLKg/m/pOcYgqByAwAJ), Yuya
> > built a tentative list of the GPLv2 only files in TortoiseHg.
> >
> > I have done it again today against the current stable version (5.9.1)
> > and manually went through the results.
> >
> > This is a brief of what I found:
> >
> > - 73 problematic files that are under GPLv2
> > - 8 Files that are under GPL, but with no version indication
> > - 6 Files without any license (including 3 empty __init__.py)
> > - 8 Files that are already GPLv2 or later
> >
> > Back in 2020, Angel Ezquerra and Student T have already agreed to
> > relicensing their work. I would not mind doing the same for my small
> > part. But how to proceed with all the other authors?
> >
> There's apparently a wiki overview of relicensing that happened in the
> past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_relicensing
> An interesting one is mpv: " In June 2015 mpv

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpv_(media_player)> started the

> relicensation process of the project's GPL licensed source code

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code> for improved license

> compatibility under LGPLv2 by getting consent from the majority (95%+) of
> the contributing developers.[41]

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_relicensing#cite_note-41> In August

> 2016 approx. 90% of the authors could be reached and consented. In October
> 2017 the switch was finalized."
>
> See the start of their switch: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033
> And the end:
> https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033#issuecomment-335511905
>
> Perhaps we should follow a similar approach? Then the question is: do we
> keep an overview of authors that need to give permission in the repository
> itself, or in a heptapod ticket?

Using BTS is interesting since I've stuck on preparing for bulk relicensing
emails and totally forgot about this issue. One concern is that many
contributors are inactive and wouldn't have heptapod account.

> Regarding the file overview, it sounds like it might be good to change the
> top-level COPYING file (although LICENSE might be a better name) to
> indicate that new contributions are GPLv2 or later.

Sounds good to me.

> The individual files
> (once GPLv2+) should perhaps not contain a separate license indication?

I don't have strong opinion, but I won't remove license indication from
individual files unless necessary. Updating them at all should be easy,
and I don't wanna think about legal issues.

[Pierre-Yves David]

On 10/7/21 9:05 AM, Mathias De Maré wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 6, 2021 at 4:08 PM 'Antonio Muci' via TortoiseHg
> Developers <thg...@googlegroups.com

> <mailto:thg...@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> it would be a pity if TortoiseHg would be dropped from Debian.
>
> In his message from 2020-11-01
> (https://groups.google.com/g/thg-dev/c/AYFxHk5aLKg/m/pOcYgqByAwAJ

> <https://groups.google.com/g/thg-dev/c/AYFxHk5aLKg/m/pOcYgqByAwAJ>),

> Yuya
> built a tentative list of the GPLv2 only files in TortoiseHg.
>
> I have done it again today against the current stable version (5.9.1)
> and manually went through the results.
>
> This is a brief of what I found:
>
> - 73 problematic files that are under GPLv2
> - 8 Files that are under GPL, but with no version indication
> - 6 Files without any license (including 3 empty __init__.py)
> - 8 Files that are already GPLv2 or later
>
> Back in 2020, Angel Ezquerra and Student T have already agreed to
> relicensing their work. I would not mind doing the same for my small
> part. But how to proceed with all the other authors?
>
> There's apparently a wiki overview of relicensing that happened in the
> past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_relicensing

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_relicensing>


Mercurial itself did such relicensing in 2010 (or around that time) to
move from GPL2 to GPL2 or later and it went well.


--

Pierre-Yves David

[Antonio Muci]

Recently (2021-03-17) btrfs went through a similar relicensing. They
used the development mailing list.

A message containing the patch that modified the files was sent to the
mailing list [0] and each author was CCed.
They answered in that thread, and the patch was integrated once
sufficient consensus was reached.

This is the relevant part of the mailing list message from [0]:

> This is a patch requesting all substantial copyright owners to sign off
> on changing the license of the libbtrfsutil code to LGPLv2.1+ [...]
>
> Each significant (i.e. non-trivial) commit author has been CC'd to
> request their sign-off on this. Please reply to this to acknowledge
> whether or not this is acceptable for your code.

There is also a github ticket [1] (our equivalent would be heptapod),
but the real conversation happened via mail anyway.

The hard part is probably identifying the authors, and give their vote a
weight proportional to their level of contribution.

Antonio

[0]
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-btrfs/20210317200144....@fedoraproject.org/T/
[1] https://github.com/kdave/btrfs-progs/issues/323#issuecomment-814144624

[Andrej Shadura]

Hi,

On Thursday, 7 October 2021 at 12:26:14 UTC+2 yu...@tcha.org wrote:

> See the start of their switch: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033
> And the end:
> https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033#issuecomment-335511905
>
> Perhaps we should follow a similar approach? Then the question is: do we
> keep an overview of authors that need to give permission in the repository
> itself, or in a heptapod ticket?

Using BTS is interesting since I've stuck on preparing for bulk relicensing
emails and totally forgot about this issue. One concern is that many
contributors are inactive and wouldn't have heptapod account.

I’m the current maintainer of thg in Debian, so I just wanted to check what’s the current progress on this issue. Do you need any help?

Speaking of which, I have a couple of minor commits to thg myself (as bugz...@tut.by and the current email), so I’d like to use the opportunity and say that I certainly agree with the change of license :)

--

Cheers,

  Andrej

[Yuya Nishihara]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2021 07:22:12 -0700 (PDT), Andrej Shadura wrote:
> On Thursday, 7 October 2021 at 12:26:14 UTC+2 yu...@tcha.org wrote:
> > > See the start of their switch:
> > https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033
> > > And the end:
> > > https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033#issuecomment-335511905
> > >
> > > Perhaps we should follow a similar approach? Then the question is: do we
> > > keep an overview of authors that need to give permission in the
> > repository
> > > itself, or in a heptapod ticket?
> >
> > Using BTS is interesting since I've stuck on preparing for bulk
> > relicensing
> > emails and totally forgot about this issue. One concern is that many
> > contributors are inactive and wouldn't have heptapod account.
> >
>
> I’m the current maintainer of thg in Debian, so I just wanted to check
> what’s the current progress on this issue. Do you need any help?

No progress so far.

Do you guys like the idea to collect relicensing agreement via BTS or ML?
I don't know if I can send an email with 100 more CC.

a. heptapod BTS
b. this mailing list
c. private email

Anyway, thanks for maintaining the debian packages.

[Antonio Muci]

Hi,

did we reach a decision on where this relicensing effor will happen?

From what I can see TortoiseHg is still in Debian testing
(https://packages.debian.org/bookworm/tortoisehg). It would be really
sad if thg was demoted for a licensing issue.

Antonio

[Mathias De Maré]

I guess (a) or (b) would be best, to keep the process public? Perhaps allow both, so the relevant developers can choose which is easiest for them?

Can we help with this process? Creating the ticket, or drafting and sending the mails?

Greetings,

Mathias

Anyway, thanks for maintaining the debian packages.

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[Yuya Nishihara]

Okay, let's start with (a) and maybe extend it to (b) later.

Can you review/edit this issue? It isn't public right now.

https://foss.heptapod.net/mercurial/tortoisehg/thg/-/issues/5763

If you have an idea to count the result, please adjust the way of voting
accordingly.

[Mathias De Maré]

I can't, I do not see the issue (I get a 404).

Greetings,

Mathias

[Matt Harbison]

I'm not sure how to give you access to the issue, but the text is this:

    Relicensing to GPLv2+ (DRAFT - DO NOT REPLY YET)

    Response needed from all TortoiseHg contributors.

    You may be CCed to this issue because you're recorded as contributing one or more changes to the TortoiseHg project, and are therefore one of many copyright holders in the project.

    The core development team would like to extend TortoiseHg's GPLv2 only license to GPLv2+ by adding the recommended "or any later version" clause to the license. This will resolve a license compatibility issue with PyQt5 and give us license compatibility with GPLv3 projects.

  Please respond to this issue with one of the following:

  YES, I agree to relicense all my contributions to TortoiseHg to GPLv2+ with the addition of the "or any later version" clause.

  NO, I would rather not.

If the list of contributors is known, maybe a checklist can be used to track progress?  But IDK how hard it is to make the list, and am not sure what level of agreement we need anyway.

[Yuya Nishihara]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2021 14:01:06 -0800 (PST), 'Matt Harbison' via TortoiseHg Developers wrote:
> I'm not sure how to give you access to the issue,

I have no idea. I thought "developer" role would be inherited from the
parent "mercurial" project, but maybe not?

> but the text is this:
>
>
> Relicensing to GPLv2+ (DRAFT - DO NOT REPLY YET)
>
> Response needed from all TortoiseHg contributors.
>
> You may be CCed to this issue because you're recorded as contributing
> one or more changes to the TortoiseHg project, and are therefore one of
> many copyright holders in the project.
>
> The core development team would like to extend TortoiseHg's GPLv2 only
> license to GPLv2+ by adding the recommended "or any later version" clause
> to the license. This will resolve a license compatibility issue with PyQt5
> and give us license compatibility with GPLv3 projects.
>
> Please respond to this issue with one of the following:
>
> YES, I agree to relicense all my contributions to TortoiseHg to GPLv2+
> with the addition of the "or any later version" clause.
>
> NO, I would rather not.

Yep, I just copy-pasted from my previous email and did s/email/issue/g.

[Mathias De Maré]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 11:01 PM 'Matt Harbison' via TortoiseHg Developers <thg...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I'm not sure how to give you access to the issue, but the text is this:

    Relicensing to GPLv2+ (DRAFT - DO NOT REPLY YET)

    Response needed from all TortoiseHg contributors.

    You may be CCed to this issue because you're recorded as contributing one or more changes to the TortoiseHg project, and are therefore one of many copyright holders in the project.

    The core development team would like to extend TortoiseHg's GPLv2 only license to GPLv2+ by adding the recommended "or any later version" clause to the license. This will resolve a license compatibility issue with PyQt5 and give us license compatibility with GPLv3 projects.

  Please respond to this issue with one of the following:

  YES, I agree to relicense all my contributions to TortoiseHg to GPLv2+ with the addition of the "or any later version" clause.

  NO, I would rather not.

I would add here (to cover as many contributors as possible): if you cannot or do not wish to login to heptapod to respond, feel free to send a mail to thg...@googlegroups.com instead.

If the list of contributors is known, maybe a checklist can be used to track progress?  But IDK how hard it is to make the list, and am not sure what level of agreement we need anyway.

A checklist sounds like a good idea.

Regarding level of agreement: I'm unsure. As per https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033:

• VLC thinks 99.99% of the code must be covered and 99% of all developers (https://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-commits/2011-November/010353.html)
• Dolphin and Mozilla think only 95% of all contributors must have agreed (https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/05/25/relicensing-dolphin/ http://blogs.fsfe.org/ciaran/?p=58)

But I think we can tackle that once we get anywhere close to 95% ;-)

Greetings,

Mathias

On Tuesday, December 14, 2021 at 9:52:34 AM UTC-5 mathias...@gmail.com wrote:

On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 11:53 AM Yuya Nishihara <yu...@tcha.org> wrote:

Okay, let's start with (a) and maybe extend it to (b) later.

Can you review/edit this issue? It isn't public right now.

https://foss.heptapod.net/mercurial/tortoisehg/thg/-/issues/5763

I can't, I do not see the issue (I get a 404).

Greetings,

Mathias

If you have an idea to count the result, please adjust the way of voting
accordingly.

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[Yuya Nishihara]

On Thu, 16 Dec 2021 15:06:55 +0100, Mathias De Maré wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 11:01 PM 'Matt Harbison' via TortoiseHg Developers <
> thg...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure how to give you access to the issue, but the text is this:
> >
> >
> > Relicensing to GPLv2+ (DRAFT - DO NOT REPLY YET)
> >
> > Response needed from all TortoiseHg contributors.
> >
> > You may be CCed to this issue because you're recorded as contributing
> > one or more changes to the TortoiseHg project, and are therefore one of
> > many copyright holders in the project.
> >
> > The core development team would like to extend TortoiseHg's GPLv2 only
> > license to GPLv2+ by adding the recommended "or any later version" clause
> > to the license. This will resolve a license compatibility issue with PyQt5
> > and give us license compatibility with GPLv3 projects.
> >
> > Please respond to this issue with one of the following:
> >
> > YES, I agree to relicense all my contributions to TortoiseHg to GPLv2+
> > with the addition of the "or any later version" clause.
> >
> > NO, I would rather not.
> >
> I would add here (to cover as many contributors as possible): if you cannot
> or do not wish to login to heptapod to respond, feel free to send a mail to
> thg...@googlegroups.com instead.

Okay, added:

"If you cannot or do not wish to login to heptapod to respond, feel free
to reply to the following mailing list thread instead.

**TODO: ADD LINK TO MAILING LIST THREAD**"

Since I don't wanna receive random unthreaded emails, I'll send a copy of
this issue to thg...@googlegroups.com to create a dedicated thread.

> > If the list of contributors is known, maybe a checklist can be used to
> > track progress? But IDK how hard it is to make the list, and am not sure
> > what level of agreement we need anyway.
> >
> A checklist sounds like a good idea.

That's doable, but we'll anyway need to update the checklist manually?

[Mathias De Maré]

(sorry about the delay in reply, I've been sick for a few weeks)

Yes, I don't think we can really get around that (I think we need to keep some list of contributors somewhere to clarify who approved? Could be in the repo also.)

Anyways, the ticket looks fine to me. Time to send out mails?

[Yuya Nishihara]

On Mon, 17 Jan 2022 01:45:18 -0800 (PST), Mathias De Maré wrote:
> > > A checklist sounds like a good idea.
> >
> > That's doable, but we'll anyway need to update the checklist manually?
> >
> Yes, I don't think we can really get around that (I think we need to keep
> some list of contributors somewhere to clarify who approved? Could be in
> the repo also.)
>
> Anyways, the ticket looks fine to me. Time to send out mails?

Okay, published the heptapod issue. We might have to add @mention or CC
to some of the contributors.