gpb infected with GPL?

[KrzysiekJ]

In commit 6b2ca4e, PropEr was added as a dependency. As PropEr is GPL-licensed, does it mean that gpb is now GPL-licensed too?

Refs proper-testing/proper#29.

[tomas-abrahamsson]

I see. gpb under GPL was never my intention, my mistake. Having read up on the referenced issue, I think, very unfortunately, that the prop_gpb will have to be reverted, at least until an excemption clause is explicitly added to PropEr's license.

[fenollp]

Wait no PropEr does not get shipped along gpb on an installation, it is only a test dependency. There is no way this can alter gpb's license, right? So people should be able to keep using GPB like nothing changed.

People working on GPB dev/internals, explicitly bringing GPB's test dependencies in, these are the one that PropEr's license impacts, right?

I really don't want to see a PBT test suite disabled once again due to EQC/licensing issues...

[fenollp]

See proper-testing/proper#4 (comment)

[KrzysiekJ]

Regarding the linked comment, the license of libstdc++ contains an exemption:

When you use GCC to compile a program, GCC may combine portions of
certain GCC header files and runtime libraries with the compiled
program. The purpose of this Exception is to allow compilation of
non-GPL (including proprietary) programs to use, in this way, the
header files and runtime libraries covered by this Exception.

There is no such exemption in PropEr. I acknowledge the fact that PropEr maintainers may have no intention to pursuit anyone in this regard, but PropEr has many contributors, so this becomes problematic (I guess that otherwise a license exemption would already be added).

If PropEr is chosen to be reverted, then another issue may be whether mere git revert is sufficient for this purpose or is rewriting of history needed.

[fenollp]

the header files and runtime libraries

The difference here and my point being: gpb has no runtime dependency on PropEr, only an (optional, even) test/dev time dependency.

[tomas-abrahamsson]

I'm thinking a way forward could be to change the license of prop_gpb.erl (only) to GPL 3 (and put a note about that in the top-level COPYING.LIB. Of course all contributors to the original gpb_eqc.erl would have to be contacted and accept. If not all can be reached, or someone objects, the prop_gpb.erl should be taken out.

As to whether reverted or some other way: I certainly hope a git revert would be enough, I mean projects can change license. Is there anything prior written about it?

[tomas-abrahamsson]

Unfortunately I have received a veto against setting GPL 3 for prop_gpb.erl so I will proceed to revert the #142 aka #151 merge commit.

[tomas-abrahamsson]

4.3.3 is now out, with the merge reverted, so I'll be closing this ticket.

(I find it to be very unfortunate, but I also think this was the only way for the prop_gpb.erl in its current form)