The wiiuse library from http://www.wiiuse.net/ has an odd license; it is GPLv3 or, for noncommercial uses, LGPLv3. I'm having trouble understanding how that kind of use restriction works or if it works at all.
So: Is this kind of thing acceptable for Fedora? What would the License: tag read?
My mind swirls with questions about whether I can accept their source under the LGPLv3 and redistribute to someone under LGPLv3 who then uses it in a commercial application, but I doubt that's on topic.
- J<
On Tue, 2010-11-30 at 11:00 -0600, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
The wiiuse library from http://www.wiiuse.net/ has an odd license; it is GPLv3 or, for noncommercial uses, LGPLv3. I'm having trouble understanding how that kind of use restriction works or if it works at all.
So: Is this kind of thing acceptable for Fedora? What would the License: tag read?
I would interpret "for noncommercial uses, LGPLv3" as a modified license which is non-free (due to the field-of-use restriction) and incompatible with LGPLv3 (because there is an additional restriction). From https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Overview :
If code is multiple licensed, and at least one of the licenses is approved for Fedora, that code can be included in Fedora under the approved license(s) (but only under the terms of the approved license(s)).
Based on that, the package would be acceptable with a License tag of GPLv3.
By the way, it's not clear to me whether the choice of GPLv3 rather than GPLv3+ was intentional. You might ask upstream whether they will grant GPLv3+, to to make things easier in the future.
"MM" == Matt McCutchen matt@mattmccutchen.net writes:
MM> By the way, it's not clear to me whether the choice of GPLv3 rather MM> than GPLv3+ was intentional.
The source is pretty explicitly GPLv3+.
MM> You might ask upstream whether they will grant GPLv3+, to to make MM> things easier in the future.
I would expect the person submitting the package to do that. (Of course, I would expect them to ask these questions about the weird licensing, too, but most people just don't care about licensing.)
- J<
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Jason L Tibbitts III -
Matt McCutchen -
Tom Callaway