[Zope3-dev] Re: [Checkins] SVN: lovely.rating/ Initial import from Lovely Systems repository

Martijn Faassen faassen at infrae.com
Wed Aug 16 09:42:41 EDT 2006


Benji York wrote:
> Stephan Richter wrote:
[snip]
>> In fact, the repository has many components checked in that have other 
>> licenses including the GPL. As long as it is clearly marked and 
>> documented, there is no problem.
> 
> That's seems to me to be an over-simplification, but I'd like to hear 
> what the ZF board has to say on the issue.

[not an official board decision or anything, just an opinion]

The ZF board may not have anything directly to say about this issue 
right now, as the code strictly speaking is still governed by the 
previous contributor's agreement until the repository is explicitly 
transferred to the governance of the ZF (we're actively working on 
making this transfer happen).

It's definitely not that case that it's okay to check in GPL-ed code as 
long as it's clearly marked and documented, if that is what Stephan 
means. Zope Corporation has been doing so, but that's because they got 
"special dispensation" (from themselves :). The current (non-Zope 
Foundation) contributor's agreement says:

"""
License Terms. Code committed to the Zope source repository ( Committed 
Code ) must be governed by the Zope Public License (ZPL)
or another license acceptable to both Zope Corporation and the Open 
Source Initiative. Committer will verify that Committed Code
contains the text of another license acceptable to both Zope Corporation 
and the Open Source Initiative. Until Zope Corporation declares in 
writing a license other than the ZPL, only the ZPL shall be used.
"""

To me that looks like only ZPL-ed code is currently allowed. The ZF's 
contributor agreement is more strict and explicitly disallows code with 
licenses with a copyleft provision such as the GPL.

Anyway, nothing is said about dependency on GPL-ed code. That's a 
different debate. It's strictly not against rules, but it does mean one 
expectation is broken: one might want to expect that all code in the 
repository is freely usable without having to worry about 
GPL-provisions. This is not the case for code that depends on GPL-ed 
code. Even though this may be already a grey area for other reasons, it 
still makes sense to think about the intent and people's expectations 
when checking in a codebase.

Regards,

Martijn



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