> On May 20, 2019, at 4:19 PM, Allison Randal <allison@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 5/20/19 11:09 PM, J Lovejoy wrote: >>> On May 20, 2019, at 3:35 PM, Allison Randal <allison@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> >>> - 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: > > Sorry for the vagueness, I was dancing around Chatham House Rule. What I > meant was that specific people in the room (no names, but ask me > off-list if you don't remember and want to know) said that we should > drop GPL 1.0, because "choose any version ever published" allows us to > choose to include 1.0 or not, and because there are certain ambiguities > in the text of 1.0 that make it worthwhile to drop it. ah, right - that was a preference that was expressed. > > >> "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. > > No one was claiming that an unversioned GPL universally means > 2.0-or-later, only that it means we have the option to choose versions. > And since we have the option to choose, we should choose 2.0-or-later. yeah, one can make that viable argument, I guess I’d just prefer that we don’t put ourselves in a position to need to explain too much. Preferably the SPDX identifier is an obvious expression of what the license notice stated or the copyright holders cleaned up any ambiguities. > > Allison
