Pulp3 Licensing FAQ¶

Why would Pulp3 Plugins be affected by the license of the pulpcore-plugin package?¶

The GPL FAQ states that subclassing as a mechansism is creating a derivative work. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#OOPLang

Coupled with the fact that theplugin API uses subclassing as a mechansism ( https://docs.pulpproject.org/en/pulpcore-plugin/nightly/plugin-writer/concepts/index.html#subclassing ) plugin code must be a GPLv2 or compatible license.

Why GPLv2?¶

Because pulpcore-plugin and pulpcore both currently use GPLv2.

https://github.com/pulp/pulp/blob/master/LICENSE
https://github.com/pulp/pulpcore-plugin/blob/master/LICENSE

Why does the pulpcore package matter? Plugin code is only imported from pulpcore-plugin, not pulpcore?¶

For technical reasons, many of the objects in pulpcore-plugin are imported and offered from the pulpcore asset itself. There are enough of these cases that offering pulpcore and pulpcore-plugin as separate license types is infeasible.

What are the GPLv2 compatible license types?¶

The gnu website has lots of info on this. This is a good place to start. https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean