[Scummvm-devel] RFC: Transitioning to GPLv3

[Einar Johan Trøan Sømåen]

Hi team

Recently the topic of which license to use has come up again. In particular
whether or not we should be moving towards GPLv3. As far as I understand
GPLv3 is compatible with the same licenses that GPLv2 is, in terms of what
code (and thus engines) we can integrate, but it is in addition compatible
with GPLv3.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#AllCompatibility gives a quick
idea of how that works out.


So the net gain for us, is that we would be able to integrate code that is
itself licensed under GPLv3, one _potential_ example would be for instance
the HPL engine: https://github.com/FrictionalGames/HPL1Engine


Technically we can perform this change because we are licensed under “GPLv2
(or later)”, which means that we can transition to v3 without having to
seek new approval from all historical contributors. (The linux kernel is a
counter example, where they lack the “or later”, and would thus need to
seek explicit permission from all contributors, as the license they got the
code under does not allow for upgrades).

Since this is a fairly large, and completely irreversible change, so we’d
like to hear what the opinions are among the team, should we stay at v2, or
move to v3?

Regards

The leadership team
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