On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 2:16 PM Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Auditing the augeas project source file licenses I found a handful of > files where the license was not specified sufficiently clearly. I've > raised this upstream: [ . . . ] > For the files which merely say: > > This file is licensed under the GPL. > > I'm not sure what the best practice is ? Can I justify "GPL-1.0-or-later" > in the Fedora spec on the basis that the non-version specific declaration > in the source could legitimately cover any GPL version ? That seems to be the approach that the Linux kernel has generally taken in their conversion of source file license notices to SPDX-License-Identifier: strings. Obviously it's defensible on GPL interpretation grounds. I personally don't like it, among other reasons because I think in probably most of these cases the author must not have meant to encompass GPLv1 in the license grant, since GPLv1 became rapidly obsolete after the introduction of GPLv2 (unlike the situation with the introduction of GPLv3). This is pretty obvioiusly the case for the kernel, which did not adopt the GPL until (shortly) after the introduction of GPLv2 and which AFAIK always had a copy of GPLv2, but not GPLv1, in the source code. There might be some rare exceptions for GPL code copied into the kernel that originated with pre-Linux projects. I also think it's a flaw in SPDX, or the application of SPDX identifiers anyway, that "any version of the GPL" is equated with "GPL version 1 or later", which I think subtly communicates somethint different, but I don't think I would succeed in convincing anyone of this. Richard Richard _______________________________________________ legal mailing list -- legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to legal-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
