Survey regarding Open Source Licensing of GR 4.0

[Josh Morman]

A quick follow up on one topic that was presented in the Q4 Project Update video:

Tl;dr - the core of the code being merged as “GR 4.0” is LGPL.  We want your opinion on how this will impact you and if further action is needed for licensing considerations.  Please submit your feedback here: 

https://forms.gle/u7PjYGhzfrshkngd9

Look forward to your responses.

Thanks,

Josh

—--

As has been widely discussed, the upcoming major version of GNU Radio, GR 4.0, is based on a new codebase developed by the team at GSI-FAIR and is being migrated into the GNU Radio GitHub Repository.  Apart from the vast and promising changes of this major revision, the code being migrated is currently licensed as LGPL, which means that there are different ramifications than the entirety of GNU Radio 3.x being GPLv3.  The plan is that blocks ported over with IP from GR3 (apart from very trivial blocks) will remain in modules that are licensed as GPLv3.  So for the vast majority of GNU Radio use cases, the situation for derived works of flowgraphs using signal processing blocks will not change.  

  

But with the core (base classes and schedulers) being LGPL, this allows derived works to link with GR, but have a different license.  Source changes to the core GR codebase would still need to be provided to those receiving any derived works.  This could enable the following situations:

1. A GNU Radio user could create an OOT not bound by GPLv3 - so long as the OOT does not link against any of the GR GPL code (e.g. gr-filter or gr-digital)

1. The OOT could not be distributed in binary form if it is built against GPLv3 modules without the artifact being licensed as GPLv3

2. Realistically, this would limit non-GPL usage of GR4 OOTs in flowgraphs to custom blocks that have been licensed accordingly

2. An application such as a graphical frontend linking to GR4 under the hood could be created under a non-GPL license

Note: The above is not legal guidance to any users of this codebase, but a statement of a licensing change compared to previous GNU Radio revisions.  Each user should consult counsel where needed to understand their own usage

Links:

https://github.com/fair-acc/graph-prototype

https://events.gnuradio.org/event/21/contributions/390/