[Spice-devel] LGPL or GPL for recorder library

[Daniel P. Berrangé]

On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 03:21:09PM +0200, Christophe de Dinechin wrote:
> Hi Frediano,
> 
> 
> We discussed GPL vs LGPL for the recorder library.
> 
> I made a mistake in commit e7df1041176eda88aea6102d1c4ecd9f144321a6 of
> the recorder library trying to “renormalize” the headers before submitting
> the Fedora package (the “norm” being that each file should contain the
> license blurb). The script I applied put a GPL license blurb on each file,
> not LGPL. I believe our agreement was to stick to LGPL in order to
> facilitate the integration in SPICE.
> 
> So first, this email is a public record that this is a mistake on my part,
> that the intent is and remain to have a license that makes it possible to
> integrate in SPICE, and that if GPL makes this impossible, the library
> will be reverted to LGPL ASAP.
> 
> Second, I vaguely remember there was an objection to some variant of LGPL
> (v2 or v3). The primary license text for the recorder library is currently
> LGPLv3. Can you please confirm that LGPLv3 works for SPICE?

Do you LGPLv3-only or LGPLv3-or-later ?

The rest of the SPICE git repos are LGPLv2-or-later licensed. Thus using
any LGPLv3 license will prevent sharing or movement of code from spice
recorder into any of the other spice libraries, without the copyright
holders agreeing to relicense it to LGPLv2-or-later.

LGPLv3 will also prevent spice recorder being used in any app which has
GPLv2-only code. QEMU is such an application for example.

LGPLv2-or-later feels like a more natural choice for consistency with
existing spice code & greater application license compatibility.

Regards,
Daniel
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