Licence/sv

Uttalande från underhållaren
Jag vet att diskussionen om "rätt" licens för öppen källkod tar upp en signifikant del av internetbandbredden, så här är skälen till varför, enligt min åsikt, FreeCAD ska ha denna.

Jag valde LGPL och GPL för projektet och jag vet för- och nackdelarna med LGPL och vill ge dig några skäl till det beslutet.

FreeCAD är en blandning av bibliotek och en applikation, så GPL skulle vara lite för starkt för det. Det skulle förhindra skapande av kommersiella moduler för FreeCAD därför att det skulle förhindra länkning med FreeCAD's basbibliotek. Du kanske frågar dig: varför kommersiella moduler överhuvudtaget? Därför är Linux ett bra exempel. Skulle Linux vara så framgångsrikt om GNU C Biblioteket skulle vara GPL och därför förhindra länkning mot icke-GPL applikationer? Och fastän jag älskar friheten i Linux, så vill jag också kunna använda den mycket bra NVIDIA 3D grafikdrivrutinen. Jag förstår och accepterar anledningen till att NVIDIA inte vill ge bort drivrutinskod. Vi jobbar alla för företag och behöver lön eller åtninstone mat. Så för mig är en samexistens av öppen källkod och sluten källkodsmjukvara inte något dåligt, när det följer reglerna i LGPL. Jag skulle vilja se någon som skriver en Catia import/export processor för FreeCAD och distribuerar den gratis eller för lite pengar. Jag tycker inte om att tvinga honom att ge bort mer än han vill. Det skulle inte vara bra varken för honom eller FreeCAD.

Detta beslut är ändå bara gjort för FreeCAD's kärnsystem. Var och en som skriver en applikationsmodul kan ta sina egna beslut.

Använda licenser
Här är de tre licenserna under vilka FreeCAD är publicerad:


 * Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL2+): For the core libs as stated in the .h and .cpp files in src/App src/Gui src/Base and most modules in src/Mod and for the executable as stated in the .h and .cpp files in src/main. The icons and other graphic parts are also LGPL.
 * Open Publication Licence: For the documentation on http://free-cad.sourceforge.net/ as not marked differently by the author

See FreeCAD's debian copyright file for more details about the licenses used in FreeCAD

License side effects
Up to Version 0.13 FreeCAD is delivered as GPL2+, although the source itself is under LGPL2+. Thats because of linkage of Coin3D (GPL2) and PyQt(GPL). Starting with 0.14 we will be completely GPL free. PyQt will be replaced by PySide, and Coin3D was re-licensed under BSD. One problem, we still have to face, license-wise, the OCTPL (Open CASCADE Technology Public License). Its a License mostly LGPL similar, with certain changes. On of the originators, Roman Lygin, elaborated on the License on his Blog. The home-brew OCTPL license leads to all kind of side effects for FreeCAD, which where widely discussed on different forums and mailing lists, e.g. on OpenCasCade forum itself. I will link here some articles for the biggest problems.

GPL2/GPL3/OCTLP incompatibility
We first discovered the problem by a discussion on the FSF high priority project discussion list. It was about a library we look at, which was licensed with GPL3. Since we linked back then with Coin3D, with GPL2 only, we was not able to adopt that lib. Also the OCTPL is considered GPL incompatible. This Libre Graphics World article "LibreDWG drama: the end or the new beginning?" shows up the drama of LibreDWG project not acceptably in FreeCAD or LibreCAD.

Debian
The incompatibility of the OCTPL was discussed on the debian legal list and lead to a bug report on the FreeCAD package which prevent (ignor-tag) the transition from debian-testing to the main distribution. But its also mentioned thats a FreeCAD, which is free of GPL code and libs, would be acceptably. With a re-licensed Coin3D V4 and a substituted PyQt we will hopefully reach GPL free with the 0.14 release.

Fedora/RedHat non-free
In the Fedora project OpenCasCade is listed "non-free". This means basically it won't make it into Fedora or RedHat. This means also FreeCAD won't make it into Fedora/RedHat until OCC is changing its license. Here the links to the license evaluation: The main problem they have AFIK is that the OCC license demand non discriminatory support fees if you want to do paid support. It has nothing to do with "free" or OpenSource, its all about RedHat's business model!
 * Discussion on the Fedora-legal-list
 * License review entry in the RedHat bug tracker

Private users
Private users can use FreeCAD free of charge and can do basically whatever they want to do with it....

Professional users
Can use FreeCAD freely, for any kind of private or professional work. They can customize the application as they wish. They can write open or closed source extensions to FreeCAD. They are always master of their data, they are not forced to update FreeCAD, change their usage of FreeCAD. Using FreeCAD doesn't bind them to any kind of contract or obligation.

Open Source developers
Can use FreeCAD as the groundwork for own extension modules for special purposes. They can choose either the GPL or the LGPL to allow the use of their work in proprietary software or not.

Commercial developers
Commercial developers can use FreeCAD as the groundwork for their own extension modules for special purposes and are not forced to make their modules open source. They can use all modules which use the LGPL. They are allowed to distribute FreeCAD along with their proprietary software. They will get the support of the author(s) as long as it is not a one way street.