I'm doing a review of a MinGW build of a Qt 6 package:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2009214
During the license check portion of the review, I have become increasingly convinced that our qt5-* and qt6-* packages have incorrect License fields. Currently they have "LGPLv2 with exceptions or GPLv3 with exceptions". I believe that most or all of them should have one of these two instead:
- LGPLv3 or GPLv2+ - LGPLv3 or GPLv2+ with exceptions
Could one or two of you license-minded people read through the comments on that bug and indicate whether you think the analysis is correct or not, please?
On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 2:57 PM Jerry James loganjerry@gmail.com wrote:
I'm doing a review of a MinGW build of a Qt 6 package:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2009214
During the license check portion of the review, I have become increasingly convinced that our qt5-* and qt6-* packages have incorrect License fields. Currently they have "LGPLv2 with exceptions or GPLv3 with exceptions". I believe that most or all of them should have one of these two instead:
- LGPLv3 or GPLv2+
- LGPLv3 or GPLv2+ with exceptions
Could one or two of you license-minded people read through the comments on that bug and indicate whether you think the analysis is correct or not, please?
Nine days later, I've had no takers, even after sending this message to fedora-legal-list. I'll ask again. Would one or two individuals interested in seeing that our packages have correct license tags please read through my analysis and see if you agree or disagree? One of the maintainers of the Qt packages would be ideal. Thank you,
On Thu, Oct 21, 2021 at 6:36 PM Jerry James loganjerry@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 2:57 PM Jerry James loganjerry@gmail.com wrote:
I'm doing a review of a MinGW build of a Qt 6 package:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2009214
During the license check portion of the review, I have become increasingly convinced that our qt5-* and qt6-* packages have incorrect License fields. Currently they have "LGPLv2 with exceptions or GPLv3 with exceptions". I believe that most or all of them should have one of these two instead:
- LGPLv3 or GPLv2+
- LGPLv3 or GPLv2+ with exceptions
Could one or two of you license-minded people read through the comments on that bug and indicate whether you think the analysis is correct or not, please?
Nine days later, I've had no takers, even after sending this message to fedora-legal-list. I'll ask again. Would one or two individuals interested in seeing that our packages have correct license tags please read through my analysis and see if you agree or disagree? One of the maintainers of the Qt packages would be ideal. Thank you,
The only exception I'm aware of is the KDE Free Qt exception: https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation/
This exception governs how the license is actually governed, rather than how it's executed, though I believe that's where the current license stanza comes from.
Neal Gompa wrote:
The only exception I'm aware of is the KDE Free Qt exception: https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation/
This exception governs how the license is actually governed, rather than how it's executed, though I believe that's where the current license stanza comes from.
Some Qt code (as far as I know, some or all of the tools that are GPL/commercial-only, not LGPL) use this GPL exception: https://invent.kde.org/qt/qt/qtbase/-/blob/dev/LICENSE.GPL3-EXCEPT
License exception use used to be more widespread before the LGPL option was introduced. Nowadays, Qt mostly relies on standard GPL and/or LGPL licenses.
Kevin Kofler
Jerry James wrote:
Currently they have "LGPLv2 with exceptions or GPLv3 with exceptions".
That is definitely wrong/outdated.
I believe that most or all of them should have one of these two instead:
- LGPLv3 or GPLv2+
- LGPLv3 or GPLv2+ with exceptions
GPLv2+ is wrong, the text actually allows only "any later version approved by the KDE Free Qt Foundation", not "any later version". So this is only "GPLv2 or GPLv3" until further notice.
So as a whole, this should be: LGPLv3 or GPLv2 or GPLv3 or I suppose you could just write: LGPLv3 or GPLv2 because the LGPLv3 always allows relicensing to GPLv3 anyway.
Kevin Kofler