Subject: Re: [PATCH] gnu: inkscape: Update to 1.0.

From: Maxim Cournoyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 May 2020 09:36:13 -0400

Hello Leo!

Leo Famulari <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Wed, May 06, 2020 at 11:23:10PM -0400, Maxim Cournoyer wrote:
>> The following updates Inkscape to its 1.0 version.  The test suite is
>> enabled and an effort is made to unbundle as much of 3rd party libraries
>> as possible (but more can be done, if you'd like to help: see the
>> comments in the patch).
>> 
>> The last patch of the series (Add libdepixelize) is added as a WIP, and
>> is included as a curiosity only (not intended to be merged in its
>> current state).
>
> Thanks!

Thanks for having a look.

> Too bad about the licensing issues... it seems like it might be a while
> before they are resolved upstream. I think it's not totally correct to
> say that the license of lib2geom is effectively GPL3+. Only the
> copyright-holders of lib2geom can say that, right? The licenses are
> effectively incoherent and I'd say the software is not something we have
> the right to distribute :/ I'm no expert, however.

You're probably right, that this needs to be sorted upstream first.

> I did notice that Inkscape's COPYING has addressed this issue for a few
> years, due to some files from copied GIMP, and reads: "As such, the
> complete binaries of Inkscape are currently covered by the terms of GNU
> GPL version 3 or later." Given that, I guess we are only waiting on
> lib2geom to make a decision?

Yes, it seems only inertia is preventing a move to GPL v3+ as a whole,
which would be much clearer, but in the meantime, there's at least that
bit of text which means it's safe to distribute Inkscape under the GPL
v3+ license.  Thanks for pointing that out to me!

> I saw the bug report on Inkscape's GitLab page [0], but I'm wondering if
> there was actually any public discussion upstream, like on a mailing
> list?

I've searched the mailing lists of both Inkscape and lib2geom, but
haven't found any recent discussion on the licensing topic.

> [0] https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/784

I've attempted to stir up some action in that thread.  A comment was
made by one of the Inkscape developer on the matter, directed to another
Inkscape developer:

> If a license change from GPLv2+ to GPLv3+ (of the raw Inkscape code)
> is something you're actually interested in you should probably make a
> comparison of pros and cons of either license (i.e. why would we as a
> project as well as possible re-users profit from upgrading to GPLv3+?
> What would we loose?) and post it to the mailing list. I don't think
> anybody feels particularly strong about keeping GPLv2 in principle,
> but a lot of effort was put in to keep our codebase compatible with it
> in the past, so there's some hesitation to just "throw that away"
> without having good reasons for doing so.

This was made here: https://gitlab.com/inkscape/inkscape/-/issues/784.
If you have a good grasp of the GPL v2 vs GPL v3 merits, perhaps it'd be
useful to them to to post that there.  IIRC, I think the big new things
in GPL v3 were immunization to patent attacks (nice to have for
Inkscape) as well as preventing tivoization (this is not so applicable),
and clarifying that linking with GPL code means the whole should be GPL.
I'll re-read the licenses text in detail when I have a chance.

Anyway, if this doesn't move quickly enough, we could reluctantly build
Inkscape with its bundled lib2geom, which is a subset of the full
lib2geom and which doesn't link with GSL (IIRC).

Maxim