> On May 20, 2019, at 3:35 PM, Allison Randal <allison@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 5/20/19 8:26 PM, J Lovejoy wrote: >> >> Given the kernel is generally GPL-2.0-only, the position here that reference to the license file is for ’that version only’ makes sense. >> >> Just wanted to make sure I remembered and it is all consistent. (I did not meant to imply I wanted to re-open the debate, had enough of that one on the SPDX discussions! ;) > > Nod, what I recall from the session in Barcelona was: > > - If the notice gives a specific license version number, we only use > -or-later in the SPDX identifier if the notice explicitly says "or > later". The default is "-only" (or just the version number). > > - If the notice gives no version number, the standard interpretation is > that the user can take that as any version of the GPL, which technically > would be 1.0-or-later. But, it would also be fine to take the file as > 2.0-or-later, which was generally legally preferred. It was not > preferred to use 2.0-only in the case of no version number, because it's > very possible that existing users are already using the standard > interpretation to take those files as GPLv3, and we don't want to cause > them problems. (On the flip side, it's massively unlikely that anyone is > using the standard interpretation to take those files as GPLv1, so we > can safely drop it.) Considering we have no caselaw on what is “legally preferred” (which is otherwise a vague term we probably ought to avoid :) - and that the GPL text itself states: "If the Program does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation.” Then, where you have a license notice in file such as, "May be copied or modified under the terms of the GNU General Public License" —> SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-1.0-or-later While I agree that practically speaking, most people are probably not going to go back to GPL-1.0 - I don’t think we should deviate from what the license explicitly says, i.e., “you may choose any version ever published…” that clearly includes GPL-1.0. >From the lengthy conversations about this kind of thing on SPDX legal team calls, this conclusion was pretty non-controversial/everyone agreed. So, I don’t think we should do something different here for any reason. It only muddles things. :) Jilayne
