License change due to violations

Question

Issue by light2yellow Thursday May 11, 2017 at 19:19 GMT Originally opened as https://github.com/mattanger/ckb-next/issues/187

As someone has mentioned, using GPLv2.0 we are violating: * Qt's LGPLv3 license * GPLv3 license in ckb-mviz * possibly something else too

This is due to the fact that GPLv2.0 is not compatible with (L)GPLv3(+). See the compatibility table.

Possible solutions: 1. Convert GPLv2.0 into GPLv2+ by editing the license file - opensource.stackexchange answer. 2. Upgrade to GPLv3 or GPLv3+.

As somebody else mentioned, we will require 's direct approval, as he is the author of the major part of this software, and since GPLv2.0 is not compatible with GPLv3(+), we cannot make an upgrade ourselves and are trapped without a consent.

该提问来源于开源项目：ckb-next/ckb-next

Answer 1

Comment by fleischie Friday May 12, 2017 at 09:37 GMT

Disclaimer: I'm not legally educated and the following opinions might be totally wrong.

I would suggest we stay with GPLv2, as GPLv3 means we would have to fork this project under a new license and keep maintaining an additional fork. I also think GPLv3 is more strict with proprietary hard/software using the target software. I think this is the reason, why the linux kernel is still GPLv2.

I doubt, that we need 's approval to change a license of a software with several different maintainers and of which the original author has disappeared on.