Licence

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Заявление сопровождающим

Я знаю что обсуждение о "правильной" лицензии для программ с открытым исходным кодом занимает значительную часть интернет обсуждений, я считаю что у FreeCAD должна быть эта, лицензия потому что.

Я выбрал LGPL и GPL лицезии для проекта , и я знаю все за и против о LGPL и это дало мне повод, для этого решения.

FreeCAD это смесь из библиотек и приложений, так что чистая GPL будет слишком жестким решением. Это помешало бы писать коммерческие модули для FreeCAD потому как , мешало бы ссылаться на основные библиотеки FreeCAD. Вы может спросите зачем вообще коммерческие модули? Linux является отличны примером, почему. Стал ли бы Linux успешным если бы GNU C библиотека была бы под GPL и следовательно предотвращала связываться с ней другим не-GPL приложениям? И хотя я люблю свободу в Linux, я также хочу иметь возможность использовать отличный графический драйвер NVIDIA. Я понимаю и принимаю причину по которой NVIDIA не хочет открывать код драйвера. Мы все работаем на компании и нуждаемся в зарплате, ну или хотя бы в еде. Так для меня, сосуществование открытого и закрытого кода, не является чем-то плохим, пока подчиняется правилам LGPL. я бы хотел чтоб кто написал процессор импорта/экспорта Catia для FreeCAD и распространял его свободно или за деньги. Я не люблю заставлять его делать больше чем он может дать. Это не будет хорошо ни для него , ни для FeeCAD.

Nevertheless this decision is made only for the core system of FreeCAD. Every writer of an application module may make his own decision.

Used Licences

Here the two licences under which FreeCAD is published:

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!

Impact of the licences

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.

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