On Mon, Sep 18, 2023 at 02:41:29PM -0400, Richard Fontana wrote: > 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 do tend to agree with your thoughts wrt the GPLv1. I think in my whole career I've only come across individual files licensed under the GPLv1 a handful of times. With that in mind it would seem more natural to treat unspecified version as 2.0-or-later, given that will be the 99.99% common case. Ultimtely this is for the upstream project to resolve, if we indicate GPL-2.0-or-later in the Fedora spec we're not causing a license problem, just giving our best interpretation of the fuzzy situation. With regards, Daniel -- |: https://berrange.com -o- https://www.flickr.com/photos/dberrange :| |: https://libvirt.org -o- https://fstop138.berrange.com :| |: https://entangle-photo.org -o- https://www.instagram.com/dberrange :| _______________________________________________ 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
