Checking in GPLv3 code [#498104]

Hi, I have a question about licenses and CVS, and was told to direct my question on here to killes.

I am developing the Google Analytics API project for Google Summer of Code:
http://drupal.org/project/google_analytics_api

I used the existing library found here as a starting point:
http://code.google.com/p/gapi-google-analytics-php-interface/

... and started to heavily modify it in order to support AuthSub authentication to the Analytics API. I checked it into the contrib repository to track my changes, not realizing that the code was GPLv3, which I am told is not compatible with Drupal since it is licensed under GPLv2.

My question is how should I proceed from here? Is it a problem to be including this code in the Drupal repository? If this is not possible, would I be best off to rewrite the code myself or to host the file elsewhere? I would like to try and avoid the latter, as I know it would make the installation procedure of the module rather annoying.

Any help you could give in regards to this would be much appreciated.

Comments

Comment #1

Crell commented 21 June 2009 at 22:44

Issue tags:

+Legal

Drupal is under GPLv2-and-later, meaning it can be used with GPLv3 code. However, only code that is also under GPLv2-and-later may be included in CVS, because we want everything in CVS to be able to be used together without dealing with edge cases. That means that at this time GPLv2-only and GPLv3-only code may not be included in CVS (as GPLv2-only and GPLv3-only code may not be merged and redistributed together).

Unfortunately, that leaves you with the following options:

1) Separate out your modified code and host it off-site with instructions on how to download it. I agree, this is not a great option.

2) Work with the Google Code project to get your changes into that package, so that users need only download that one package which is then better because your additions have been incorporated. Normally this would be the best option, but I don't know that it would be compatible with a SoC project's workflow.

3) Reimplement the code you need from scratch, Drupal-ish or otherwise, and check that into CVS. If you're doing very heavy modifications that may make sense anyway. I don't know the library well enough to say.