[TYPO3-50-general] Contributing to TYPO3 v5 / FLOW3: License Agreement

[Martin Kutschker]

Steffen Müller schrieb:
> Hi.
> 
> On 02.05.2008 23:17 Martin Kutschker wrote:
>> Steffen Müller schrieb:
>>> Hi.
>>>
>>> On 29.04.2008 23:43 Robert Lemke wrote:
>>>>> One more question:
>>>>> What about extensions/components in v.5? It sounds like extension
>>>>> developers also have to sign that contract.
>>>>
>>>> If extensions are part of the official distribution: yes. But as you 
>>>> never
>>>> know if an extension will become part of it at a later point, it 
>>>> makes a
>>>> lot of sense to sign it in any case.
>>>>
>>>
>>> IMHO a "changing the core licence" scenario could also affect 
>>> non-core-merging extensions.
>>>
>>> We now have the situation that an extension is a derived work of the 
>>> core, mainly because it is not a stand-alone applications but an 
>>> extension of core functions. That's the reason why TER extensions 
>>> must be licenced equally to the core licence. (GPL2+later)
>>
>> This can be solved. It's possible to add some special exemptions to 
>> the GPL for certain applications. But I guess it would be possible to 
>> add exemptions for a certain subset of the API. So an extension that 
>> would use only the limited "super free" API could use any license.
>>
> 
> I'm not to sure if I got you right. Do you mean that those parts of the 
> core which handle extension functions have to be nonGPL? (LGPL?)

No, Core function would still be GPLed. But the exemptions would be made 
for 3rd party code that used it. They bould be

 > But how to seperate those parts from the rest?

List all of them in the Licence. This is no joke.

Anyway, the result would be awkward. The extension could only use a 
handful of functions. You could probably only write wrapper extensions 
for third party code. I'm sure people do that already (for 4.x) 
knowingly or not violating the GPL.

> Do you have an example of some piece of OSS that uses these exemption?

No.

>> the developers. But don't worry to much, I probably won't write code 
>> for 5.0. I'm just an interested bystander ;-)
> 
> Because of the licence contract?

I have to read it first. But if the contract granted the Association the 
right to relicence the Code into a closed-source licence I would not 
contribute. More real reasons are that I'm actively using and developing 
4.x that I simply don't have the time for 5.0.

Masi