[josm-dev] License clarification for JOSM plugins

[Brett Henderson]

For what it's worth, I have no problem with my minimal contributions 
being made available under GPL v2 or v3 or any later version.

Getting hung up on which version we're allowing will just cause grief 
for everybody, we should be trying to further the cause of osm not spend 
all our time on licence quibbles.  While Debian may allow v2, I believe 
it makes sense to fix any JOSM licensing inconsistencies now rather than 
later.  The simplest approach seems to be to add a "v2 or later" clause 
now to minimise restrictions.  It might be advisable to send a quick 
email to the top contributors to make sure there's no major objections.

As an aside, osmosis has a similar issue where it doesn't specify the 
licence version in the headers (just states GPL) but includes a GPL v3 
licence in the root directory.  I guess I should fix this as well.  I 
read the FSF recommendations about putting huge headers in files and 
also thought it ridiculous, so I followed the JOSM lead.

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
>   
>> But the _point_ of the license comments is that they are attached to  
>> every file, thereby making it clear what the terms for that file are.  
>> You need to put _something_ on each file.
>>     
>
> There is no way I will ad 10+ lines of stupid disclaimers about
> warranty to each and every single file in JOSM. This is, thankfully,
> not America.
>
> I especially dislike the idea of a "copyright" line on every file
> since I would have to amend that each time I apply a patch that
> someone sent. Imi seemingly had the same problem and simply put "and
> others", which doesn't do any good either.
>
> I have now updated the "LICENSE" file in JOSM to say that it is safe
> to assume "GPL v2 or later" (file attached below). In the jurisdiction
> I live in, it is generally the *intent* that counts, and I assume that
> all contributors who have contributed under GPLv2 would also have done
> so under v3. If anyone who has contributed stuff under v2 is unhappy
> with this, contact me and we'll find a way to resolve this without
> breaking JOSM. 
>
> I will also, at some point in the near future, update every single
> source file to contain a reference to this "LICENSE" file.
>
> I think this should be good enough for the Debian guys to go ahead
> with their work.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
>
>                     -----------------------
>
> JOSM License
> ============
>
> JOSM, and all its integral parts, are released under the GNU General 
> Public License.
>
> Earlier contributions to JOSM did not specifiy a version of that
> license, but the license included in the distribution was version 2.
>
> All contributions made on or after 15 April 2008 are explicitly "GPL 
> v2 or later".
>
> This is valid for all files released in the JOSM subversion tree, even
> if they do not carry their own copyright or license information.
>
> According to the current JOSM maintainer, it is safe to assume that
> all previous contributions are also "GPL v2 or later", but an effort
> will be made to contact the past contributors to have full clarity.
>
> The GPL v3 is accessible here:
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
>
> The GPL v2 is accessible here:
> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html
>
> Note: This is not valid for JOSM plugins. These are not considered
> an integral part of JOSM and may be under any license.
>
>
> Copyright and Contributors
> ==========================
>
> JOSM was written by Immanuel Scholz <imi at eigenheimstrasse.de>.
>
> Major code contributions from (in alphabetical order):
>
> David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com>
> Gabriel Ebner <ge at gabrielebner.at>
> Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping at web.de>
> Raphael Mack <ramack at raphael-mack.de>
> Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
>
> Please add your name liberally if you think you have made a major
> contribution (or add names of others who have).
>
> Many minor contributions and patches by others; see SVN history
> at http://josm.openstreetmap.de/svn/ for details.
>
> Copyright rests with the contributors.
>
>