[webkit-dev] WebKit licensing and LGPLv3

[Maciej Stachowiak]

Hi Everyone,

With the release of GPLv3 and LGPLv3, I'd like to take a moment to  
discuss WebKit licensing. LGPLv3 includes some restrictions beyond the  
previous version that make it difficult to accept for many key  
contributors and users of WebKit, including Apple. Given this, we'd  
like to keep the project at LGPL 2.1, to make sure it can be used in  
all the ways it is used today.

To that end we'd like to do two things:

1) We will continue to accept only code that's licensed under a BSD- 
style (no advertising clause) license, or LGPL 2.1, or other  
compatible license. We don't want to accept code that's LGPL 3 only,  
as that would make the whole project LGPL 3.

2) We'd like to change the copyright notices from their current mix of  
"LGPL 2 or any later version" and "LGPL 2.1 or any later version" to  
just LGPL 2.1, to make this clear. This one is maybe more debatable,  
so I'd like to know if anyone objects. It would prevent incorporating  
WebKit code into LGPL 3 projects, and would require sign-off from all  
copyright holders to ever change to a different LGPL version in the  
future (in case the FSF came out with a version 3.1 or 4 that solved  
some of the problems with v3).

Thoughts?

Regards,
Maciej