Forwarding the bug report from openSUSE legal team : kdevelop5 is GPL-2.0 ("only"). However, the files below have LGPL-3.0 licenses. Combining them with GPL-2.0 is possible but the license of the resulting work would have to be GPL-3.0. Please check with upstream to figure out if the licenses of the files below should really be LGPL-3.0. kdevelop-5.0/formatters/astyle/lib/ASBeautifier.cpp| kdevelop-5.0/formatters/astyle/lib/ASEnhancer.cpp kdevelop-5.0/formatters/astyle/lib/ASFormatter.cpp kdevelop-5.0/formatters/astyle/lib/ASLocalizer.cpp kdevelop-5.0/formatters/astyle/lib/ASLocalizer.h kdevelop-5.0/formatters/astyle/lib/ASResource.cpp kdevelop-5.0/formatters/astyle/lib/astyle.h
This is inside a plugin. Would it be enough to make the plugin GPL 3?
Sorry for the delay, finally got an answer : https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLPlugins https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#GPLAndPlugins Thus, depending on how it is invoked, it could cause the entire resulting binary to be GPL. An option would be to add an exception, allowing the GPL plugin to link with the program without causing the resulting derivative work to be licenseable under the GPL.
In my eyes this section of the GPL FAQ is relatively questionable. Just because it's part of the FAQ doesn't mean it's what law will actually do. According to my recent research about a similar issue, a GPL plugin "infecting" its base application to require it being GPL as well has never been tested in court, and the typical lawyer is very sceptical that this concept would withstand a trial. To be honest, I think these whole debates are causing only headaches and are not useful for anything ... I would look into this if it is really required, but if nobody forces me to I will just leave it at the status quo.
So you suggest we drop kdevelop from openSUSE ?
I'd suggest a bit of "relax" on both sides. Christophe, no need to go with the nuclear option: in the worst case you can drop just that plugin. Sven, regardless of "tested in court", I would still try to play nice. KDE e.V. is still Associate Member of FSFE...
Astyle upstream changed to an MIT license from 2.06 (changelog http://astyle.sourceforge.net/news.html). That should help. It looks as though most distros package libastyle on its own; does KDevelop actually need to bundle it? Supporting common distro versions would require compatibility with both 2.0x and 3.0.x however.
(it looks as though the current code is 2.04 with some local patches).
Yes: commit ffc9dc9cf914d13919038a3febe3c67039e5e579 Author: Kevin Funk <kevin.funk@kdab.com> Date: Thu Nov 27 19:09:53 2014 +0100 astyle: Update libastyle copy to 2.04 Please just try upgrading this copy to 2.06 then! This is likely pretty easy. Thanks for the hint about the license switch of astyle, Francis. We can't depend on astyle 2.06 inside distro packages yet, cf. https://repology.org/metapackage/astyle/versions (it's not even part of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS yet)
We'd be allowed to dynamically link to distro packages of 2.04 (LGPL-3.0), no? It's only because we bundle the code and statically link it that we have this problem.
@Francis: No, dynamically linking to a LGPLv3-only library has the same effect as copying the code into your application. The resulting work would have to be GPLv3. See: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility (second column, last line in each section)
Git commit aecd24c2f384d500de1dc83f8ba3fb4f2fd8323d by Kevin Funk. Committed on 13/12/2017 at 21:56. Pushed by kfunk into branch 'master'. Update to astyle 2.06 to fix licensing issues 2.06 has a new software license: MIT. "The Artistic Style software license has changed. It is now under the MIT license" cf. http://astyle.sourceforge.net/news.html Refactor code in astyle plugin to match new API from 2.06. A bit of refactoring aid is provided by: http://astyle.sourceforge.net/notes.html FIXED-IN: 5.3.0 M +714 -308 plugins/astyle/3rdparty/libastyle/ASBeautifier.cpp M +95 -73 plugins/astyle/3rdparty/libastyle/ASEnhancer.cpp M +1654 -585 plugins/astyle/3rdparty/libastyle/ASFormatter.cpp M +403 -134 plugins/astyle/3rdparty/libastyle/ASLocalizer.cpp M +75 -126 plugins/astyle/3rdparty/libastyle/ASLocalizer.h M +139 -41 plugins/astyle/3rdparty/libastyle/ASResource.cpp M +843 -837 plugins/astyle/3rdparty/libastyle/astyle.h M +8 -10 plugins/astyle/astyle_formatter.cpp M +1 -1 plugins/astyle/astyle_formatter.h M +2 -4 plugins/astyle/astyle_preferences.cpp M +0 -5 plugins/astyle/astyle_preferences.ui M +11 -2 plugins/astyle/astyle_stringiterator.cpp M +2 -0 plugins/astyle/astyle_stringiterator.h https://commits.kde.org/kdevelop/aecd24c2f384d500de1dc83f8ba3fb4f2fd8323d