[gnome-flashback] Gnome Panel and Gnome Applets

[Lanoxx <lanoxx gmx net>]

Hi everyone,

(sorry for the long mail)

Regarding the licencing issues of Gnome Panel and Gnome Applets I have 
contacted Vincent Untz, below is his reply and what I answered to that.

While reviewing the code licenses I noticed that the wncklet applet is 
GPL but it has one header file which is LGPL. That looks to me like a 
mistake. Besides that the licenses are not consistent per folder!

    applets/clock/:
        all .c and .h files entirely GPL

    applets/fish/:
        fish.c - GPL
        fish-resources.[ch] - No license header!


    applets/notification_area/:
        fixedtip.[ch] - GPL
        na-tray.c - GPL
        main.[ch] - GPL
        all other files - LGPL!

    applets/wncklet/:
        wncklet.c - GPL
        wncklet.h - LGPL <-- Error?
        window-list.[ch] - No license header!
        workspace-switcher.[ch] - No license header!

In the gnome-panel subfolder there is a mix of source files which are 
licensed both under LGPL and GPL. libpanel-applet is pure LGPL. 
Originally I thought that in the COPYING files we can list for each 
folder (applets/ gnome-panel/ and libpanel-applet) which license applies 
to that folder, but given that inside these folders the licenses are 
also so heterogenous I think its best to just point to the comment in 
the source file. Im not sure how to deal with files that have no license 
header?

Philipp what are your thoughts on this?

>> On 01/06/14 08:48, Vincent Untz wrote:
> > You should check the headers of each file, but as far as I remember,
> > only libpanel-applet is LGPL. Everything else is GPL (I just
> > double-checked with headers of some applets files, and they're indeed
> > GPL).
> >
> > Note that I'm very surprised that gnome-applets is LGPL and not GPL. For
> > instance, https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-applets/tree/geyes/geyes.c
> > is clearly GPL. Same for gweather applet.
>
> Yes, I was also quite surprised. I just checked most of the files, and
> gnome-applets/accessx-status and gnome-applets/mixer are LGPL, while
> gnome-applets/battstat and all the other applets are GPL.
>
> > Also, if you look at
> > https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-applets/commit/COPYING?id=1ee9bd740898d3b7438e4e8bb06318cb823af6d5
> >
> > (which is the commit adding the license file for gnome-applets), the
> > commit message clearly mentions GPL and not LGPL. So I assume that the
> > wrong file got added.
>
> Thanks for the link. Yes, I agree that probably the wrong file was
> added. But given that two applets are indeed LGPL it seems that actually
> both files would be needed.
>
> > It's best to change things so that:
> >   - COPYING explains the license of each subcomponents with
> >     human-readable text ("foo is GPL")
> >   - COPYING.GPL, COPYING.LGPL, etc. are created with the content of each
> >     license
>
> Yes, thats a good idea. We will do that.
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Vincent
> Thank you very much.
> Sebastian

Cheers
Sebastian

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