Il 10/12/2015 21:41, Josh Boyer ha scritto:
On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Mattia Verga <mattia.verga@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm very confused on how to check if a program is GPLv3 or GPLv3+.
Looking at gnu.org website it seems (to me) that there's no difference
between the two: there's only one license text
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt) and the declaration to insert in
source headers says "either version 3 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version" (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html)
So how to distinguish between the two?
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.
Exactly the "or (at your option) any later version" text. If that is
present, the code is GPLv3+ because it grants rights to use a later
version of the GPL. If that text is not present, it is GPLv3. There
is only one instance of each version of the GPL license itself and the
"+" moniker simply reflects the fact that the author of the code may
have granted use of future versions of the GPL via that statement in
the copyright/licensing text.
josh
Thanks, this is what I thought. But what about if the package carries a
Copyright.txt file which says "license: GPL-3"? Does it wins over source
headers?
I'm asking because I'm in this situation while packaging "Indistarter"
in Fedora. I'm now waiting for a clarification about the software
author, but I would like to know what to say him for fixing this
situation. Does he have to change source headers if he want to ship as
GPLv3 only? There's no such case on gnu.org as it seems that the only
option complied is GPLv3+.
Mattia
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