Hello folks,
I recently had a few discussions about the license under which Roundcube is published. Currently this is GPLv2 and I think it's time to change it.
Therefore I'd like to share some thoughts with you and invite you to share your opinions about this topic. For me there are three possible directions to go:
- Upgrade to GPLv3
Since I'm not very familiar with all the details I currently don't know what kind of changes this would involve but I assume it to be an easy and obvious step.
- Switch to AGPLv3
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affero_General_Public_License) This license was made for software which is accessed over a network and which isn't necessarily distributed in the classic way. This would require adopters to share their changes to the core program and linked stuff like plugins also if they only provide Roundcube as a service. Of course this looks very restrictive since up until now one only had to publish his/her code under GPL if Roundcube was distributed within a package (which itself needs to be GPL, too).
- Switch to LGPL
I had several requests from companies who'd like to distribute Roundcube with their commercial packages. This could be quite hard because the GPL requires all "linked" parts (for my understanding this includes plugins and skins) to be GPL too. As an advantage of publishing Roundcube under LGPL I see more potential contributors even if they don't have to share their own stuff with the community. Of course we have to check whether all the libs Roundcube requires are also available under LGPL.
For options 1) and 2) there's one addition: I think that we should exclude the skins from the GPL restrictions because the easy customization is what makes Roundcube nice and custom skins often include some copyrighted artwork and are pretty individual.
What do you think about this? Please feel free to comment the above lines.
Best regards, Thomas _______________________________________________ List info: http://lists.roundcube.net/dev/