panel-relicensing.html

<h2>Electrum relicenses source code ahead of version 2.6 release</h2>


<p>As of February 24 2016, Electrum source code is published under the
MIT license, the same license used by Bitcoin Core. This change
concerns both the Electrum client and the Electrum server.
<p>
We decided to relicense Electrum for two reasons: Firstly, we want to
make Electrum more attractive to developers who are looking to
integrate lightweight Bitcoin functionality into their systems, and a
more permissive license is helpful in this regard. This is especially
relevant for the Electrum server, which was previously published under
the restrictive GNU Affero Licence.
<p>
Secondly, we are about to release a new version of Electrum for mobile
devices and tablets. In order to make Electrum available in various
app stores (such as Microsoft's Windows Store or Apple's App Store) we
cannot keep the restrictive GPL license, as publishing Electrum on
some of these stores may break the terms of the GPL.
<p>
Over the last few months, we have been collecting permission from the
Electrum contributors, in order to republish their contributions under
the MIT license. More than 100 contributors agreed with the
change. One contributor opposed the change, and a few others were
unreachable; the relevant portions of the code were either removed
(such as the GTK GUI) or rewritten.
<p>
I would like to thank all the developers and non-developers who
contributed to Electrum.
<p>
Thomas Voegtlin, founder of Electrum.