[webkit-dev] WebKit licensing and LGPLv3

[Christopher Brichford]

On Jul 24, 2007, at 4:51 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

>
> 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.
>

Sounds good to me.  I'd prefer BSD-style licensing whenever possible.


> 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).
>

Does not matter to me as long as I can continue to use the version of  
the LGPL I am using today.


Chris