License change of Vivliostyle

[Kawakubo Toru]

Hello,

We intend to change the license of our core layout engine (https://github.com/vivliostyle/vivliostyle.js) and

UI (https://github.com/vivliostyle/vivliostyle-ui) to AGPL in the next release.

This change is based on the recent business plan of Vivliostyle.

Please see the following for AGPL: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

-- 
Toru Kawakubo （川久保 亮）
Vivliostyle Inc.
http://vivliostyle.com

[Florian Rivoal]

On Dec 13, 2016, at 07:47, Peter Sorotokin <soro...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 7:22 PM, Kawakubo Toru <kwk...@vivliostyle.com> wrote:

We intend to change the license of our core layout engine (https://github.com/vivliostyle/vivliostyle.js) and

UI (https://github.com/vivliostyle/vivliostyle-ui) to AGPL in the next release.

This change is based on the recent business plan of Vivliostyle.

Please see the following for AGPL: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.html

Please note that the code which is contributed by Google is licensed under Apache License 2.0 and that could not be changed without explicit permission from an authorized Google representative. I am a Google employee and the original author of that code - but I DO NOT have authority to change its licensing terms.

I am not an expert in FOSS license compatibility, so I do not know if this creates any problem for the proposal.

(Disclaimer: I am not a party to this decision)

My understanding is that the code written by Vivliostyle would be relicensed under the AGPLv3, that the code written by you/Google would remain under the Apache v2.0 license, and that the combination would be usable by abiding by the terms of both licenses, which effectively means that it would be governed by the terms of the AGPLv3 since it is more constraining. As far as I know, the terms of earlier *GPL licenses  and earlier Apache licenses were contradictory, which meant that such combined works were not possible, but the *GPLv3 and Apache 2.0 were design with this compatibility in mind, making it possible.

That said, I am not a lawyer, so this is just my layman's understanding.

—Florian

[Kawakubo Toru]

Thank you Florian, that is exactly the same as our understanding.