Embrace and extend [LWN.net]

Embrace and extend

Posted Oct 20, 2012 23:23 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (subscriber, #307)
In reply to: Embrace and extend by man_ls
Parent article: OpenOffice graduates from the Apache Incubator

Yes, but no.
I doubt The Document Foundation will want to release a mixed-license tree (not dual-licensed, but some parts with a license and other parts with another one)...

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Embrace and extend

Posted Oct 21, 2012 0:35 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

That's actually pretty common, as long as the licenses of all the individual parts are compatible.

They can then either list the project as being under the license that covers everything, or they can say that it's under one license, and then list the exceptions.

The linux kernel is under GPLv2, except for parts that are under BSD....

you do have to be careful that the licenses are compatible, or you find yourself in the situation busybox got themselves into, they had most of the tree GPLv2+, but a few parts were GPLv2 only. They opted to acknowledge this by changing the license of the overall project to GPLv2 only

Embrace and extend

Posted Oct 23, 2012 14:11 UTC (Tue) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

The two primary licences for LibreOffice are LGPL3 and MPL2.

There's a major refactoring going on, I believe, to replace the Oracle code base with the Apache code base. Sounds a bit daft I know, as the code is identical, but it enables the Oracle code to be relicenced from Oracle's LGPL-only licence to LO's MPL/LGPL. When that's done, LO will be consistently licenced LGPL/MPL right through.

Cheers,
Wol

Embrace and extend

Posted Oct 23, 2012 19:58 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

That is what I was wondering: does the LibreOffice project relicense the code to MPL/LGPL? Do they need to ask for consent, or does the Apache Software License allow for such relicensing to happen automatically?

The other possibility is in line with what others have commented: release under the LGPL, but keep some parts under the ASL.

Embrace and extend

Posted Oct 24, 2012 14:50 UTC (Wed) by thumperward (guest, #34368) [Link]

MPL2 is compatible with the ASL. A detailed (and, I should say, easily Googleable) explanation of exactly what is happening and exactly what it means for LibreOffice's licensing is available here:

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Re-Basing

If you've "never seen an authoritative answer" as regards how interoperable the Apache license is, by the way, it rather raises the question of how exactly you believed copylefted projects were able to make use of Apache code for all these years.

Embrace and extend

Posted Oct 24, 2012 15:09 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

My ignorance is ample enough to encompass all kinds of license combinations, I can assure you. I knew that code under the Apache License version 1 (formerly known as the Apache Software License, ALv1 for short) could be relicensed to GPLv2, I knew that GPLv3 was compatible (by design) with ALv2, I did not know if you can just change the headers from ALv2 to GPLv3 and be done with it.

After reading the linked wiki (thanks for that), it appears that they will acknowledge code from the ASF and under the ALv2, and relicense the code at the same time under the MPLv2. Nice and clean.