Problem/Motivation

Currently everything committed to Drupal.org's git repository is licensed GPLv2 and later (GPLv2+). Adding the option for installation profiles/distributions to be packaged with third party code on Drupal.org was a huge improvement, but has resulted in requests to include code with licenses that are not compatible with GPLv2+. Currently, everything (the installation profile, modules, themes, third party libraries and all) included in the downloadable package of a distribution must be compatible with GPLv2+.

By limiting distributions to GPLv2+ on Drupal.org, we limit the libraries distributions can include. Because the GPLv2+ license allows anyone to distribution Drupal along w/ contrib modules and themes as GPLv3, distributions that want to use these additional libraries are doing so on Github.

Proposed resolution

Give distribution maintainers the option of selecting a GPLv3+ (GPLv3 and later) license for the packaged download available on Drupal.org.

Potential Problems

According to the FSF, there are more licenses are compatible with GPLv3 than the GPLv2. However, since GPLv2+ is downstream-compatible with GPLv3, distributions packaged as GPLv3+ will offer downstream recipients less freedom than distributions packaged as GPLv2+.

Since GPLv2 and GPLv3 are not compatible, distributions licensed as GPLv3+ couldn't incorporate any GPLv2 ONLY or GPLv3 ONLY code (i.e. code that is licensed without the "and/or later" clause). Also, downstream recipients would not be allowed to combine what they receive in a distribution under GPLv3+ with such code.

It should also be noted that it is very hard to find free software that is licensed under GPLv3 and later (GPLv3+). For instance, the libraries that is mentioned below under "Example Whitelist Requests from Distributions Currently Rejected" are licensed under GPLv3 or Apache 2.0 ONLY.

Workarounds

Use Composer to declare the dependencies of a Drupal distribution. Reach out to the maintainer of the free software that available under GPLv3 or Apache 2.0 and request that they dual license it under GPLv2+. Many maintainers of free software care about the freedom of their users and will accommodate such a request.

Example Whitelist Requests from Distributions Currently Rejected:

Distributions Considering Moving to Github:

Currently none.

Distributions That Have Already Moved to Github:

DKAN

DKAN has moved because several libraries we use can't be whitelisted. We are tracking those libraries and their status here:https://github.com/NuCivic/dkan/issues/226

Miscellaneous

We currently do all issue and code management on Github and push commits to Drupal.org with Jenkins.