[webkit-dev] WebKit licensing and LGPLv3

[Donald C. Kirker]

Hi Maciej,

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 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.
As I understand it, yes (standard IANAL disclaimer here). I have no 
objects with this.
> 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).
I think sticking with "LGPL 2 or any later version" might be best for 
now. The reason I say this is it puts fewer limits on what GPL projects 
WebKit, or parts of WebKit (I suppose), can be incorporated into. 
Personally, I am not a big fan of (L)GPL v3 (although, I have not really 
followed it since the first draft), but I still think that it is good to 
be as less restrictive as possible, in certain senses.

-Donald Kirker