The team quickly came to the conclusion that in order to keep Dolphin relevant in an ever-changing environment, it would need to be relicensed under GPLv2+. This would give Dolphin some much needed freedom to breathe within the open source landscape. As such, relicensing formally began in September of 2014.
A massive undertaking.
The default GPL2 licence was what we call GPL2+, it was only when people specifically modified it to not include the “or later” phrase that it became GPL2-only, and now they are experiencing why the phrase were there, and why they were idiots for removing it.
They weren’t idiots, they were making a reasonable precaution. When they made their license choice they didn’t know what the GPLv3 would hold, it was an up and coming license and a lot of people were worried about it. Several projects removed their “or later” clause to avoid potential problems if the GPLv3 raised issues.
No license is perfect and sometimes you push in one direction and find out later another way would have been better, it happens. Imagine if they had kept the “or later” clause and found out the GPLv3 made things worse for them, cmpatibility wise. People would be calling them idiots for not locking down the license.
If they had kept ‘or later’, and GPLv3 was not o their liking, it wouldn’t have matter one bit, it would still be GPLv2 or later. It would still have been more flexible than staying with v2-only.
But they didn’t want that flexibility. By declaring that you’re licensed under “2+”, you’re saying that anyone can use your code under whatever the terms of GPL3, 4, 5, etc happen to be – even though none of these versions existed at the time.
Rather than gamble on whether future GPL versions would be acceptable, a lot of developers concluded that GPL2 was good enough for them, and that any future revisions would not automatically apply.
Thankfully, they made the GPLv3 friendlier to such people by adding a provision that, rather than making the “or later” automatic, they could defer that decision to a later date by specifying someone with the authority to decide whether or not that part applies when the next version rolls around.
The most appropriate way to do this is to use copyright assignment. If you are happy for a project to relicense your code using new licenses, then you ought not to be too bothered about assigning your copyrights to the project.
If someone wants your code for another project, then they just have to find you to get the appropriate agreement from you.
Is it not the way that Apache Software Foundation agreement works?
I was reading it with this,much more important dolphin in mind.
https://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin
Seriously, they’re so concerned with a license for something which is designed to violate other licenses? Color me confused.
Done
How is it designed to violate other licenses?
Virality.
GPL does not violate any other license, it ads freedoms and restrictions that other licensed do not provide.
Augmentation is not same as violation.
In fact, GPL is incompatible with a host of licenses.
I believe they meant that because Dolphin is a GameCube/Wii emulator. Of course it would be nice if that had been mentioned in the post…
Alas, being an emulator doesn’t mean it’s designed to violate others’ licenses. Depending on where you live you’re perfectly within your rights to use emulators to play games that you own and thus it’s not a violation of any license.
By the same token, depending on where you live the GPL may or may not be valid.
Of course, but you do realize the difference there? Using an emulator to play stuff you own on your own hardware is quite a different thing than sharing stuff that you didn’t create with others?
Of, course there is a difference. In the same way that my Toyota Camry isn’t exactly the same as every other Toyota Camry. Even those that were built seconds later in the same plant with the same options and same color have a different millage, wear and tear. Different nicks in the paint. Different driving conditions. There is always a difference.
There is also always a similarity. Like my Camry is similar to a Ferrari in that they are both cars.
I was highlighting the similarities, to highlight the irony present. Which is still present despite the rather minute differences.
But aside from that, many people are self deluded into thinking that everyone using an emulator is using it to play things they own or have legal access to. They don’t.
And you seem to be deluding yourself into the belief that the Dolphin-devs are somehow responsible for what users do or that Dolphin itself somehow facilitates copyright violations; AFAIK it doesn’t copy cartridges, it doesn’t facilitate sharing them in any way or anything like that and the copyright violation — if any — has already happened before the ROM is loaded into Dolphin in the first place.
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Edited 2015-05-27 08:43 UTC
I thought that was obvious, but apparently not. I’m fairly certain that emulators are above the board legally, but they facilitate end user license violations and copyright violations. So its just kind of weird that they are so focused on not violating anyone’s copyrights on code for the emulator, while knowing that pretty much everyone that uses the code will be violating the copyrights of others.
So do iPods. And VCRs.
Linux+GNU-tools do that, too! How dare they care about their own licenses when their stuff clearly facilitate violations of other people’s licenses? The hypocrisy!
But they also facilitate the preservation of these games for historical/cultural purposes, something which most of the rights holders have little to no interest in. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but this is extremely important to some people, and the hardware that the games run on isn’t going to last forever. Once its gone, then we’re left with whatever Nintendo decides to resale at some point in the future.
Is very critical to an O.S. Now, I will support such move(a massive undertaking) for a _file_ manager oh what a huge task, when it will amass users from other DEs to KDE.
There are several projects out there called Dolphin – the OP here didn’t say which one and it wasn’t obvious on the page that was linked to either. Turns out this isn’t the KDE 4 file manager, the Android browser, Java 7 or the GameCube itself, but actually a GameCube/Wii emulator that I suspect most readers of OSnews had never heard of before.
On the article itself, relicensing large projects is a total nightmare – Mozilla had to do it a few times and it took years to accomplish.
Yeah, the post should be edited to reflect which of the many software projects called Dolphin this is. The title of the link refers to the Dolphin Emulator.
I read some of the comments before clicking the link, and was left a little confused at first.
Dolphin, browser
Dolphin, File Manager
Dolphin, the ROM emulator
My first thought was Dolphin Smalltalk, but that’s just me
I thought about Dolphin, the marine mammal animal.
Yeah, because calling a file browser or an emulator that way is far from being particularly descriptive.
At least here Microsoft shows some unusual cleverness :
(File) Explorer
Internet Explorer
Office
Notepad
Calc
Solitaire
Task manager
…
Not fancy names just to look hyped. Yeah, open Nautilus to browse Dolphin. I bet my grandpa might not have understood a word of that incommensurable mess.
And those are difficult to google for. Everything is a trade-off.
I’d say the XDG .desktop file approach is best.
They allow every program to specify both its actual name (eg. Nautilus) and a “generic name” (eg. File Manager) and then the desktop environment can choose which to display.
Nautilus is a bad example there, since while that’s the project name and the name of the binaries, it’s universally just called “Files” in the Gnome UI. Most Gnome projects are like that – Epiphany is just labeled “Web”, Evince is just “Document Viewer”, etc… the project names aren’t user-visible.
The FSF is very silly concerning ALv2 compatibility. The truth is that they were fearing it would be too popular. The APache Software Foundation doesn’t agree the FSF assesment.
The solution, beyond any doubt, is to add a clause to the GPLv2 software that permits linking to code under the Apache License. Alternatively, since they are relicensing already the could go Apache altogether since that is a license with a lot less collaboration trouble.