[Tux4kids-discuss] Licensing Information

[David Bruce]

Hi Deepak and Brendan,



On Sat, Aug 11, 2012 at 1:15 PM, Brendan Luchen <cheezmeister at gmail.com>wrote:

> Deepak,
>
> I'd assume we'd want to stick with GPL v3 like the other titles, unless
> anyone sees a problem with that. Of course, you're the author.
>

I generally would favor GPLv3+ (mainly because I favor GPL and v3 is the
current version, not so much that I'm worried about "Tivo-ization" or want
a specific patent clause).  The biggest practical disadvantage is that
GPLv3 is unequivocally not compatible with Apple's App Store terms.
 According to many, including the FSF, GPLv2 isn't compatible with the App
Store either, but the issues seem to be such that no once can complain to
Apple except the authors of the software in question, and Apple doesn't
seem to care unless/until the authors try to complain.

As for tuxmath's licensing, it traditionally was considered to be "GPLv2 or
later", except that the licensing was not at all well-documented, and many
source files lacked any licensing or copyright terms at all.  We tried to
clean all this up a couple of years ago, and I thought it best to go to a
uniform "GPLv3 or later".   However, I don't think anyone within the
project would object to use under "GPLv2 or later" terms.  The only code I
think we really cannot do that for would be the liblinebreak code which,
IIRC, was copied from an old version of gettext by Tim Holy.  That code is
definitely "GPLv3 or later".  If we want to use some of tuxmath's current
code under something other than "GPLv3 or later", we need to at least try
to email anyone who has made significant contributions in the last couple
of years and see if anyone objects.

One thing is pretty clear, however - tuxmath has always been a GPL project,
and we don't have the legal standing to use the source except


-- 
David Bruce

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