On February 11, 2015 at 12:53:54, C. Scott Ananian (cananian(a)wikimedia.org) wrote:
On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:48 PM, Tyler Romeo <tylerromeo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I’m still not entirely convinced that the GPLv2 allows
more licenses than
the v3.
GPL v2+ is a superset of GPL v3. I don't know why you find that so hard to
understand.
Well, if you read your own email...
[...] I do not think it is possible to add Apache code
into MediaWiki core
and still allow licensing MediaWiki under both the v2 and the v3.
Yes, that is the case. Accepting Apache code into core should be treated
the same as accepting GPL v3-only code into core. Both significantly
restrict the licensing of the combined work.
--scott
Like I’ve been saying, GPLv2 and GPLv3 are separate licenses, and thus cannot be combined.
You are using one or the other. GPLv2+ is not a superset. And, as a result, since
MediaWiki is licensed under the v2+ rather than v3, we cannot accept Apache-licensed code
into core.
I’m not sure how you see this as being more restrictive, considering it actually reduces
the number of licenses that are compatible with core, and thus reduces the number of
libraries we can add into core. As of right now, we cannot bring Apache-licensed third
party libraries into core. However, if we upgrade to v3, we can.
(And, as an addendum, since most GPLv2 works are licensed like MediaWiki is, “GPLv2 or any
later version”, upgrading MediaWiki to v3 will not stop us from using most GPLv2 libraries
anyway.)
--
Tyler Romeo
0x405D34A7C86B42DF