GPL compatibility

[Exagone313]

Hello

First I must emphasis that I am not a layer.

The file sdk/dmg/Corona3rdPartyLicenses.txt lists some licenses that are (I think) not compatible with the GPL. I cannot say why licenses are incompatible, although I suppose it's about advertising clauses or relicense and covered work compatibility. This page lists some incompatible licenses without saying the reason of the incompatibilities.

• The OpenSSL license (unless you use the system's provided OpenSSL distribution, and not your own, see this), but newer releases use the Apache 2 license
• DirDialog.h, .cpp: the page linked contains:
  ALSO, IN MAKING THE RESOURCE AVAILABLE TO OTHER SITE VISITORS FOR DOWNLOADING, QUINSTREET WILL INFORM SUCH OTHER VISITORS THAT, ALTHOUGH THEY MAY DOWNLOAD ANY RESOURCES FOR COMMERCIAL OR NONCOMMERCIAL USES, THEY MAY NOT REPUBLISH THE SOURCE CODE SO THAT IT IS ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC WITHOUT FIRST OBTAINING THE COPYRIGHT OWNER'S PERMISSION.
• Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)

[Shchvova]

Thank you for bringing it up. Since we do not link with any third party GPL-licensed code, most of incompatibilities are on our side: we can modify our license to have exceptions for those licenses.

I'll talk to our lawyers on how to resolve issues you brought up.

[Shchvova]

Hello again!
After talking to our consultant/lawyer on this topic and some coding I can close this issue as resolved. First of all, thank you for bringing it up. There was issues with code from those two places. We rewrote code/redid licensed art.

However, OpenSSL is another beast. But thing is, we put out our code under dual license, this have no connection to the license of OpenSSL, because we do not distribute GPL binaries. Corona builds you can download from coronalabs.com are distributed under commercial license and have necessary acknowledgments. If someone will choose to distribute product derived from our GPL code and they would want to link OpenSSL (which is optional), they would have to add a license exception (good example and discussion can be found here).

[Exagone313]

You could update the OpenSSL version, current versions are released under the Apache 2 license.
I think what's in external directory needs to be updated (there may be security implications for not updating dependencies), but I even found another licensing problem, look at files in external/JDK7 for example:

/*
 * Copyright (c) 2005, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
 * ORACLE PROPRIETARY/CONFIDENTIAL. Use is subject to license terms.
 */

(And the "solution" of using files coming from OpenJDK as a replacement is not possible, it is released under GPLv2, so not compatible with GPLv3 - not sure if files describing an ABI is really a problem though, but Oracle.)

I don't want to be rude, but it seems that going open source is harder than it seems for big projects :s

EDIT: A small review of the beginning:

• Angle: contains some binaries, but probably built from the included source.
• JDK7: ORACLE PROPRIETARY/CONFIDENTIAL
• ProgrammingInLua: e-book, doesn't seem to be released under e.g. a Creative Commons license, seems rather "all rights reserved".
• Simple-NSAlert-with-Blocks: license file missing, but the linked page contains an X11-style license, just needs to be included
• android-support-libs/multidex: binary (didn't extract the jar, but probably contains compiled Java code and source not included)

Also, how do I build Corona? It seems that build instructions and build scripts are not fully included. See this, including the post that indeed says that as you are the only copyright owner (your company), you don't violate your own license, it's for others.

[Shchvova]

We do not distribute GPL binaries, most of your remarks are not applicable (like not having sources for all binaries). We distribute our own source code with GPL, if one wants to make your GPL distribution of Corona derivative product it is their responsibility to use proper OpenSSL or make sure all the licenses included are GPL compatible. Our binary distributions are proprietary.
Thanks for noticing PiL.

[Shchvova]

Btw, Omni Source License is attributed in 3rd party licenses file (for Simple-NSAlert-with-Blocks).