Licensing clarification, updates

[Christian Stimming]

Am Freitag, 6. Juli 2007 23:22 schrieb Josh Sled:
> As per <http://svn.gnucash.org/trac/changeset/16254>:
>
> I've summarized the state of the LICENSEing at the top of the file.

Thanks, Josh, for adding this summary to the license text.

Actually I'm wondering whether different copyrights are assigned on a per-file 
basis from a law point of view. I would have thought they are rather assigned 
on a per-contribution basis, which corresponds mainly to a per-contributer 
basis. If that is true, I'd rather suggest a summary like the following:
* All source is licensed under GPLv2
* In addition to this, contributions by the following devs have the exception 
for linking against OpenSSL: jsled, cstim, ...
* In addition to this, contributions by the following devs are licensed under 
GNU GPL, Version 2, "or (at your option) any later version": cstim, ..., and 
all source code files that contain this clause.

Also (or alternatively), couldn't we also say "All contributions before [some 
date in the past] are licensed under GPLv2 or any later version"? When 
thinking about the license on a per-contribution basis, I think the most 
precise wording could include the fact that you used to contribute code under 
GPLv2 or later, but then changed your mind at [some date in the past] and 
everything since then is GPLv2-only? 

Also, I think I'd be interested to license my contributions under (brand-new) 
GPLv3 in addition to the common GPLv2 license. I think this could be added in 
the LICENSE file by stating something like "In addition to this, 
contributions by ..., cstim, ... are licensed under GPLv3 as well". Should 
something like this rather be avoided, or would that be fine? What do the 
others plan so far?

> I've added specific text for the "OpenSSL exception" as derived from
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openssl#The_exception>.
>
> I've added this text to files I have copyright on that do not include the
> "or any later version" text.

Thanks. Err, do you think we could achieve the same effect by saying only "... 
yadda yadda GPLv2. For this program, the OpenSSL exception as noted in the 
LICENSE file is granted as well." If that would be sufficient, I think 
something along these lines avoids quite some text overhead :-)

Christian