Hi all !

> Recently the IRC channel has been rather full of discussion around the
> current licensing of Rockbox (GPLV2 is how most people interpret it,
> but it *is* a little unclear), and whether or not we should move to
> GPLV3 in order to include code from other such projects (espeak is the
> primary example here).

I first thought that in order to be allowed to incorporate GPL 3.0
code, Rockbox could be re-licensed under GPL “version 2 or later”[1].
However this is not true: the Rockbox project would need to upgrade
to GPL 3.0[2].

If Rockbox moved to GPL 3.0, this would prevent incorporating LGPL
(all versions) code, unless it would consist in linking to an
existing library. However, there seems to be an way around this:
existing code needs to be ported to Rockbox anyway, so a the new port
branch can be re-licensed under under GPL 3.0. Apparently, this is
allowed[3] since LGPL 2.1.

Otherwise there's always the WTFPL[4] aka "DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT
TO PUBLIC LICENSE" :)

Regards, Dan

[1]
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#v2v3Compatibility

[2]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#GPLCompatibilityMatrix

[3]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing#Footnote7

[4]
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/WTFPL
Received on 2007-09-12