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Including plugins licensed under GNU Affero GPL v3 #1826

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robocoder opened this issue Nov 17, 2010 · 1 comment
Closed

Including plugins licensed under GNU Affero GPL v3 #1826

robocoder opened this issue Nov 17, 2010 · 1 comment
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Task Indicates an issue is neither a feature nor a bug and it's purely a "technical" change. wontfix If you can reproduce this issue, please reopen the issue or create a new one describing it.

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@robocoder
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The mysociety Funnels plugin (and conceivably other plugins, in the future) is released under the AGPL. This is not strictly compatible with Piwik's core license, GPL v3, as it hinders software maintenance (e.g., refactoring between the two), and may affect the adoption of Piwik.

Under the AGPL, a Piwik instance is obligated to provide the source code modifications of any AGPL component (by nature of the "network interactiion" clause, e.g., piwik.js request to the server's tracker plugins). There is also an obligation to provide the "corresponding source" that it depends on. As I understand it, the latter obligation may be satisfied by linking to our latest.zip ... unless the "corresponding source" (i.e., the rest of Piwik) has also been modified. (There appears to be a grey area here as there's no diffentiation between source files specifically licensed as GPL vs a software package that includes GPL compatible components.)

So... we can summarize that where a Piwik user:

  • makes no modifications to Piwik, there is no obligation to provide source
  • makes modifications only to non-AGPL code, there is no obligation to provide source
  • makes modifications only to AGPL code, there is an obligation to provide source to the modified AGPL component
  • makes modifications to AGPL code that does not depend on changes to non-AGPL code, there is an obligation to provide source to the modified AGPL component
  • makes modifications to AGPL code and non-AGPL code, there is an obligation to provide all modified source; this might be a contentious issue ... one workaround is for the user to isolate these modifications and contribute it for inclusion in core

If we accept AGPL plugins, we would need to mitigate the license confusion:

  • update LEGALNOTICE
  • add a FAQ (or modify an existing one)
  • provide means for plugin to clearly display and link to its license information (see core/Plugin.php getInformation()
@robocoder
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Third-party plugins are welcome to use the AGPL, dual license, etc.

But given the above, the project policy will have to be that AGPL is incompatible for the purposes of inclusion with core.

@robocoder robocoder added this to the Community and Marketing milestone Jul 8, 2014
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Task Indicates an issue is neither a feature nor a bug and it's purely a "technical" change. wontfix If you can reproduce this issue, please reopen the issue or create a new one describing it.
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