[Fedora-legal-list] Drupal module licensing

[David Nalley]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 5:24 AM, Lyos Gemini Norezel
<lyos.gemininorezel at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/19/2011 07:42 AM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
>
> As the FAQ states:
>
> "4: I want to release my work under GPL version 3 or under GPL version
> 2-only. Can I do so and host it on Drupal.org?
>
> You can release your work under any GPL version 2 or later compatible
> license, however, you may only check it into Drupal's CVS repository
> if you are releasing it under the same license as Drupal itself, that
> is, GPL version 2 or later. If you are unable or unwilling to do so,
> do not check it into Drupal's CVS repository."
>
> So if the module is carried in Drupal CVS, it *must* necessarily be
> licensed GPLv2+.
>
> Sorry to drag up such an old post... I'm way behind in email reading.
>
> This caught my eye and I had to respond.
>
> I'm no lawyer... however, doesn't the above quote from drupal make the
> entire codebase non-free?
>
> For all intents and purposes... drupal is saying "use this license or get
> lost", which calls into question who really owns the code.
>
> Is drupal effectively claiming ownership (and therefore licensing rights)
> over all of the code in their repository?
>
> Or is this kind of arm twisting allowed by supposedly "free" licenses?
>
> Lyos Gemini Norezel
>
> P.S.- Sorry Paul... forgot to use "reply list" instead of "reply".
>


Not at all - nothing forces drupal to accept any submission. Many
projects have coding style and license requirements. You are free to
of course redistribute drupal from your own repository with code that
has a gpl-compatible but non GPL2 or GPL2+ license. Drupal, I imagine,
is doing this to dramatically reduce the burden of licensing
compliance. (And having seen projects similar to drupal struggle with
this for months on end I can certainly understand that reasoning.)

Fedora puts similar (albeit far wider) restrictions on what you can
commit to Fedora's SCM - it's all contained on
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing.