Talk:OpenGroupware.org
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This article was nominated for deletion on 18 August 2005. The result of the discussion was keep. |
[edit] User talk:Whitemice
hi whitemice, can you point me to the part of the software that is licensed under the License: GPL/LGPL, as i downloaded the software and only found the copyrighted part,License - Copyright (C) 2000-2006 SKYRIX Software AG, so maybe i missed something here ?
- Note status of the software is Freeware not Free software. Mion 18:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Contact: info@skyrix.com
No mention at all about the License: GPL/LGPL, so the license in the actual distribution is valid which makes it a copyrighted software. Mion 18:55, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
- Content of the README: License and copyright information for the various modules are contained
in the appropriate
COPYRIGHT
and
COPYING / COPYING.LIB
files. Except for modules contained in the ThirdParty directory, most sources are licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License and the copyright is owned by SKYRIX Software AG.
And yes there is some LGPL.Mion 19:08, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Solutions
The License: GPL/LGPL is part of the package so it belongs on the page, and we should add at the same line that the whole package is copyright SKYRIX as well. Which moves the package from free software to freeware. Do you agree on that ? Mion 19:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Reply to "Solutions"
This doesn't make any kind of sense; the fact that code is copy-righted doesn't bear on if it is open source / "free" or not. In fact, code MUST be copyrighted in order be open source or there is no party with bearing to declare a license. This is why some Open Source projects require developers to explicitly state they are turning over the copyright of the code to the project. Skyrix, who hosts the OpenGroupware.org Open Source project, does not require the reassignment of copyright; they only require contributed code to be under a compatible LGPL/GPL license. In fact if you look in the ZideStore code you will find code that is not copyrighted by Sykrix. Which means that Skyrix does not have the right to alter the license of the code. Copyright = right to license, be that license proprietary or open. This is how projects move from one license to another, for example when Samba went from GPLv2 to GPLv3; they can do that because they hold copyright on all the code. Copyright policies for Open Source projects are all over the map.
Even wikipedia's own definition of free software recognises this fact:
To make these acts possible, the human readable form of the program (called the source code) must be made available and the software must be accompanied by a software licence saying that the copyright holder permits these acts (a free software licence).
The "software licence saying that the copyright holder permits" is the LGPL/GPL. See under "Permissive and copyleft licences" in wikipedia's free software page:
The FSF categorizes licenses in the following ways: * Copyleft licenses, the GNU General Public License being the most prominent. The author retains copyright and permits redistribution and modification under terms to ensure that all modified versions remain free for as long as the author wishes."
