On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 01:15:06PM -0400, Tom Callaway wrote: > On 05/28/2014 12:22 PM, Tim Flink wrote: > > I'm working on a project that's currently gpl2+ licensed [1] and > > we want to include some code from a gpl3 project [2]. This code > > will be an isolated utility used to generate documentation from > > data contained in other source files. > > > > [1] https://bitbucket.org/fedoraqa/libtaskotron [2] > > https://github.com/ansible/ansible > > > > I know that if we went forward with this, the project would need to > > be distributed as gpl3 but I have some questions around the > > specifics: > > > > Would all the source in our project need to be re-licensed as gpl3 > > or is it sufficient to have the project license as gpl3 and the > > existing source files as gpl2+? > > > > Assuming that it is possible to keep the existing gpl2+ source as > > gpl2+, would it be possible to change the project license back to > > gpl2+ in the future if we were to remove any gpl3 code? > > == DISCLAIMER == > IANAL, this is not legal advice. > == /DISCLAIMER == > > You would not need to re-license existing source from GPLv2+. The > effective license on the compiled binary works would be GPLv3 in the > scenario you describe. If you removed the GPLv3 code (or the code was > relicensed to GPLv2+), then the resulting binary license would be > GPLv2+. By adding the GPLv3 code, you're just forcing the "+" to > trigger to GPLv3 in the combined binary work. The individual source > files are still a mix. Disclaimer: IAAL but IANYL other than solely to the extent that IAARHL. I agree with what spot says. I suppose one might argue that a change to a file from libtaskotron in this scenario might be properly considered GPLv3+ only; I would myself consider that absurd if the later-in-time developer retained the original legal notice for the libaskotron file (all the more so if the developer in question is the same as the earlier-in-time developer). When GPLv3 was released in 2007 the legal assertion we are making here was probably somewhat in question, but it soon came to be established practice to mix individually-licensed GPLv2+ and GPLv3 source files in a single work. It is really not logically different from the situation of including GPL-compatible but noncopyleft-licensed files in a larger GPL-licensed work. - RF _______________________________________________ legal mailing list legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/legal
