Confusing licensing issues

hilope · 2009-12-11 02:51:21

Hi everybody.

Xinhas licensing confuses me. I'm a developer of different apps using GPL licenses.

\iconsets\Tango\LICENSE is a Creative Commons 2.5 license which prevents developers like me from shipping Xinha within a project developed under GPL license. The htmlarea license itself is compatible with GPL licenses. Only this little file is a problem.

This is relating to GPL licensing. I haven't checked if CreativeCommons 2.5 is compatible to htmlarea license which would also result in a problem deliver the icon set within a combined package.

For my researches the CC2.5 license is not required and redundant.
Why is there a file describing CC 2.5 ???

Extract from http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project:

TangoProject wrote:

The Tango base icon theme is released to the Public Domain. The palette is in public domain. Developers, feel free to ship it along with your application. The icon naming utilities are licensed under the GPL.
Though the tango-icon-theme package is released to the Public Domain, we ask that you still please attribute the Tango Desktop Project, for all the hard work we've done. Thanks.

I really need some explainations on the licensing model used for Xinha.

Thanks
Sven

gogo · 2009-12-16 03:25:50

Thanks for raising this question Sven.

Generally speaking, Xinha is intended to be BSD/HTMLArea licensed.

Some plugins may be differently licensed, the fact that they are included probably implies that Xinha has (special) permission to distribute them, but they remain in their own licence, plugins are non essential and can just be deleted if you find the particular plugin's licence can not be utilised.

The Tango and Crystal icon sets have as you note CC and GPL licences.

It is not required to use these icon sets, you can remove the iconsets, and set

_editor_icons = 'Classic';

A quick look at the code (Ray would know more) indicates that the bare default, where neither _editor_icons nor _editor_skin has been configured, would not use Crystal or Tango (effectively, it would use our own Classic).

In summary, I believe that you can remove these iconsets without any problem, same goes for any plugins which you don't want. In future, I suspect that we should probably make a separate distribution somehow.

Any other developers have an opinion... Ray?

hilope · 2009-12-16 04:56:54

Thanks.

Just to complete this thread I want to post a license check from the fedora guys who are packaging my module including Zikula Application Framework for fedora os.
Remind this is only related to GPL license issues - I don't know if CC is compatible to your bsd, but if not, it is not allowed to package the mentioned things in Xinha ... you have to take a deep look into your code and package

## fedora report below ##

* Licensing violations :-(
Most of the files are a mix of GPLv2+, LGPLv2+ (Might have some v2
only but I
haven't checked yet), and BSD. This places the module as a whole
under the
GPLv2+ (or v2 if there's any v2 only code). So far this is fine. But
we do
have some GPL incompatible licensed code as well that we have to deal
with,
either by getting rid of it (some things aren't necessary) or rewriting or
relicensing:

Creative Commons Licenses: No CC licenses are GPL compatible:

This one could be a problem:
*
xinha/skins/inditreuse/README:This
work
is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
xinha/skins/titan/README:This
work is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
*
xinha/plugins/CharacterMap/character-map.js:
license : "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License"
*
xinha/plugins/HtmlEntities/html-entities.js:
license : "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License"
*
xinha/plugins/ListType/list-type.js:
license : "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License"

*
xinha/plugins/ImageManager/Classes/GD.php:
This is licensed under the php-2.02 license.
*
xinha/plugins/ImageManager/Classes/NetPBM.php:
This is licensed under the php-2.02 license.
*
xinha/plugins/ImageManager/Classes/IM.php:
This is licensed under the php-2.02 license.
xinha/plugins/ImageManager/Classes/Transform.php
###

ray · 2009-12-16 12:28:02

Hilope, you seem absolutely right with the Tango license. I have just removed the license file from the trunk. I don't know why Douglas has placed it there in the first place, but it looks obviously wrong.

I also changed the license of HtmlEntities, which is by myself, if this matters anything

wymsy · 2009-12-16 14:20:55

I just did some checking, and found that the original version 1.0 of CharacterMap was released under the htmlarea license by Holger Hees and Bernhard Pfeifer for System Concept GmbH & Bernhard Pfeifer (http://www.systemconcept.de/). Version 2.0 was made by mokhet (Laurent Vilday) and released under the creative commons license. I'm wondering if that was valid, to change the license in that way, and maybe we should just change it back. Or try to get in touch with mokhet and get him to change it.

Also, the ListType plugin was written by mishoo (Mihai Bazon) and released under the htmlarea license, according to the pluginInfo in the file itself. Where does it say creative commons?

wymsy · 2009-12-16 15:00:46

Found it. I was looking at an older version of ListType. It's exactly the same situation as CharacterMap. Mokhet released his modifications as creative commons for both of them.

gogo · 2009-12-16 19:24:43

@wymsy

From the HTMLArea licence,

1) Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

That's really the main point of the HTMLArea licence, doesn't say anything about not adding extra conditions, just that you can't take away that stuff. So, if the CC licence was applied in combination with that (a two part licence if you like), it would be OK from a technical standpoint I think to change as the plugin modifiers have done.

I think it's ok from a "intention of the BSD licence" standpoint anyway, the idea is not to restrict you, just to make it clear the author has copyright and bears no responsibility if it eats your grandmother.

Personally, I'd much rather see everything HTMLArea/BSD, that's the most useful to the developers who need to use Xinha without worry of licenceing.

Goes back to making a separate "not-so-free" package of these slightly awkward things. Maybe pulling them into their own subversion area too.

mokhet · 2009-12-17 11:28:01

Hello, sorry if the licencing of the character map and listType plugin is confusing. At the release time, I remember we had a discussion here about this specific issue. I will be happy to change the licence to anything that's suits the community, just let me know what I should do. In any case, I will even be happy to have my name removed from it and give any credits back to the community and gogo.

My mail is still mokhet@mokhet.com (thanks to wymsy for letting me know an issue was spotted here, since you may have noticed I'm not active at all here, I don't even use Xinha anymore)

wymsy · 2009-12-17 12:11:38

If you still have svn commit access, you could simply change the license in the pluginInfo to HTMLArea. The files both already contain credits to the original authors, so I wouldn't think you need to change anything else, unless you want to. If you don't have access, I think your post above is sufficient to permit someone else to do it for you. Thanks!

mokhet · 2009-12-17 14:47:53

I probably still have commit access to svn (honestly I don't know) but I have no idea what the login and especially the password can be (and my computer doesn't remember either). So I am (of course) allowing anyone like you wymsy, gogo or anyone else able to, to do the necessary updates on the svn.

If this post (and my previous one) is not enough to let you update the files (the way you need them to be updated), please let me know and I'll do whatever is necessary to fix this issue.

gogo · 2009-12-17 21:00:48

Thanks mokhet, that clears it up for your plugins, I'll make the changes for you later today.

wymsy · 2010-02-12 12:26:36

Updated in changeset:1235

gogo · 2010-02-12 19:18:11

Thanks wymsy, I'd forgotten!

squeelsof · 2010-02-27 12:12:25

one more thing - TEXTURES... so that we can have "new" units by retexturing the same model over and over...

EDIT: is anyone besides me and arhangel reading this?

gogo · 2010-02-27 19:13:55

I dunno who you are squeelsof, but you ar enot posting where you think you are posting.

This forum is about a web developers tool called "Xinha", we don't use "textures" for anything! This is not about any game or something like that which you seem to post about.

Weird.

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#1 2009-12-11 02:51:21

Confusing licensing issues

#2 2009-12-16 03:25:50

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#3 2009-12-16 04:56:54

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#4 2009-12-16 12:28:02

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#5 2009-12-16 14:20:55

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#6 2009-12-16 15:00:46

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#7 2009-12-16 19:24:43

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#8 2009-12-17 11:28:01

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#9 2009-12-17 12:11:38

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#10 2009-12-17 14:47:53

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#11 2009-12-17 21:00:48

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#12 2010-02-12 12:26:36

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#13 2010-02-12 19:18:11

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#14 2010-02-27 12:12:25

Re: Confusing licensing issues

#15 2010-02-27 19:13:55

Re: Confusing licensing issues

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