The release of 4.0 is approaching, as a final preparation for this release, 4.0rc1 is now available. It is mostly a bugfix release, however there is one big change. KTorrent has now split into the application ktorrent and the library libktorrent.

Libktorrent contains all the torrent downloading code, and ktorrent contains all application code and plugins. The goal is to make libktorrent an independent library (though still closely related to ktorrent), which can be used by other applications.

Issues with the licensing of libktorrent:

• There is no COPYING in the root directory. It is referenced by majority of copyright/license headers in the source files like:
  

  Code: Select all

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc.,


• There is no COPYING-CMAKE-SCRIPTS in the package. Get it from kdelibs. The file is referenced by FindKTorrent.cmake.
• It is not a very good idea to license a library with GPL (then only GPL software can link against it). LGPL might be a better choice. In the end it is your choice, just making sure you know limitations.

MoDaX wrote:then only GPL software can link against it

gpl says "This (GNU) General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs", so i think all of free apps will be able to use that lib

sek.tor wrote:

MoDaX wrote:then only GPL software can link against it

gpl says "This (GNU) General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs", so i think all of free apps will be able to use that lib

No. For example, a BSD-licensed application, once linked with the GPL library, effectively becomes GPL licensed. The same applies for other GPL-compatible licenses

Proposed patches for KTorrent 4.0rc1:

• Code: Select all

  Description: clean up CMakeLists.txt
 * Drop excess build dependencies that are not actually used.
 * Require KDE 4.4.0
 * Require Qt 4.6.0
 * Drop obsolete hacks for Plasma from <= KDE 4.1
Author: Modestas Vainius <modax@debian.org>
Forwarded: yes
Last-Update: 2010-05-08


  
  Patch is here

• Code: Select all

  From: Modestas Vainius <modestas@vainius.eu>
Subject: [PATCH] general/fix_target_link_libraries

Do not link with excess libraries.

  
  Patch is here

MoDaX wrote:Issues with the licensing of libktorrent:

• There is no COPYING in the root directory. It is referenced by majority of copyright/license headers in the source files like:
  

  Code: Select all

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc.,


• There is no COPYING-CMAKE-SCRIPTS in the package. Get it from kdelibs. The file is referenced by FindKTorrent.cmake.
  

Will add those files. I have also committed your patches.

It is not a very good idea to license a library with GPL (then only GPL software can link against it). LGPL might be a better choice. In the end it is your choice, just making sure you know limitations.

This will happen eventually, but not now.

MoDaX wrote:It is not a very good idea to license a library with GPL (then only GPL software can link against it). LGPL might be a better choice. In the end it is your choice, just making sure you know limitations.

It's not a very good idea to license a library with the GPL if you want other software to be able to use it without becoming open source. Is that really something beneficial to KTorrent? I accept the rationale for certain core KDE libraries -- you'd be prohibiting closed source software from the platform as a whole by GPL licensing them. Does that really hold up for libktorrent?

Also keep in mind it's the choice of everyone who owns copyright to code that has been moved to libktorrent, not just the person who maintains that code. I would assume this means libktorrent stays GPL until someone spends the time to either get permission or do a code audit and rewrite any contributed sections.

MoDaX wrote:No. For example, a BSD-licensed application, once linked with the GPL library, effectively becomes GPL licensed. The same applies for other GPL-compatible licenses

That's a bit of an oversimplification. I could take the BSD code and modify it to not use that library and then distribute a binary without releasing my changes. I could buy a non-GPL license from the copyright holder to the library and do the same. So "once linked" it's the case, but that code can still be used free of the GPL in other ways. It's also not just licenses from that list. It's equally true for ANY code that uses GPL code -- otherwise you'd be violating the GPL. Some people believe dynamically linking to GPL code from closed source code doesn't violate the GPL -- whether or not a derived work is created may depend on more than that. Linus, AMD, and NVIDIA (among others) don't think it does, which is why there are closed source Linux drivers.

phantom042 wrote:

MoDaX wrote:It is not a very good idea to license a library with GPL (then only GPL software can link against it). LGPL might be a better choice. In the end it is your choice, just making sure you know limitations.

It's not a very good idea to license a library with the GPL if you want other software to be able to use it without becoming open source. Is that really something beneficial to KTorrent? I accept the rationale for certain core KDE libraries -- you'd be prohibiting closed source software from the platform as a whole by GPL licensing them. Does that really hold up for libktorrent?

Also keep in mind it's the choice of everyone who owns copyright to code that has been moved to libktorrent, not just the person who maintains that code. I would assume this means libktorrent stays GPL until someone spends the time to either get permission or do a code audit and rewrite any contributed sections.

Open Source != GPL. There are GPL incompatible open source licenses out there. Licensing sometimes gets complex and ugly where "simpler" license like LGPL might help popularity. And yeah, I understand that re-licensing is not a simple process. Really, I'm not complaining, just barely noting.

phantom042 wrote:

MoDaX wrote:No. For example, a BSD-licensed application, once linked with the GPL library, effectively becomes GPL licensed. The same applies for other GPL-compatible licenses

That's a bit of an oversimplification. I could take the BSD code and modify it to not use that library and then distribute a binary without releasing my changes. I could buy a non-GPL license from the copyright holder to the library and do the same. So "once linked" it's the case, but that code can still be used free of the GPL in other ways. It's also not just licenses from that list. It's equally true for ANY code that uses GPL code -- otherwise you'd be violating the GPL. Some people believe dynamically linking to GPL code from closed source code doesn't violate the GPL -- whether or not a derived work is created may depend on more than that. Linus, AMD, and NVIDIA (among others) don't think it does, which is why there are closed source Linux drivers.

Well, I'm looking from binary distro point of view. BSD licensed binary linked with GPL library effectively becomes GPL will all consequences from this. It also increases licensing complexity. But again, this is NOT a big deal as there are numerous examples of such libraries as well, e.g. libsmbclient is licensed under GPL-3+.

George wrote:

MoDaX wrote:Issues with the licensing of libktorrent:
[list]
[*]There is no COPYING in the root directory. It is referenced by majority of copyright/license headers in the source files like:

Code: Select all

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc.,


[*]There is no COPYING-CMAKE-SCRIPTS in the package. Get it from kdelibs. The file is referenced by FindKTorrent.cmake.

Will add those files. I have also committed your patches.

As far as I can tell, you did not make these changes in branches/stable... meaning they won't be in 4.0. I targetted them for 4.0. Licensing stuff and those useless libraries in ktorrent/CMakeLists.txt are kind of blocker and trivial to fix. Feel free to change KDE version requirements as appropriate if you still intend to support earlier versions.

I know, still need to backport those