Il 11/12/2015 14:57, Richard Fontana ha scritto:
On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 06:47:47AM +0100, Mattia Verga wrote:
But what about if the package carries a
Copyright.txt file which says "license: GPL-3"? Does it wins over source
headers?
It really depends on the circumstances, but if all the source file
notices say "GPLv3 or later" I would probably assume that the entire
program is GPLv3-or-later even if this is not explicit in the global
copyright file.
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+.
I took a look myself (if this is the 'indistarter' project hosted on
SourceForge) and I would conclude it's GPLv3-or-later since the source
files bearing the project maintainer's copyright and license notices
all use "or later" (bare 'GPLv3' only appears in files with license
metadata), and there's nothing I could see that suggested there was
'GPLv3 only' code.
Richard
I did a check also with folks at gnu.org and they confirmed your
opinion. Here it is their response:
Thank you for your question. If the headers state that the source is
under GPLv3+, then that controls. The license file for all projects will
just be the plain GPLv3; the copyright holder indicates whether the work
is GPLv3-only or GPLv3+ in the license headers.
I will ask Indistarter developer to set all files to GPLv3+ to avoid
future confusion.
Thanks for the help.
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