On 5/31/19 4:18 PM, Richard Fontana wrote: > > The first sentence says the code "is licensed under the GNU General > Public License." It doesn't specify a version. I could read that as > meaning "is licensed under any version of the GPL" (regardless of how > we interpret the later-versions clause in GPLv2). The fact that the > following sentence apparently tried to point to the GPLv2 license text > doesn't negate the possibility that the previous sentence was a grant > of license for any version. > > Those copyright notices said 2013, which was 5 years into 2013. If > that means this license notice dates from 2013, by 2013 a reasonable > kernel contributor [1] could be expected to know that an un-versioned > reference to the GPL could refer at least to both GPLv2 and GPLv3 -- > that is, by that time it was common knowledge that there was more than > one actively-used GPL in the world. > > Anyway it seems very different to me from the more typical sort of > GPLv2-only notice that alters the standard GNU notice by eliminating > the "or later" language, so that the reference to "version 2" is in > the same sentence as the license grant language. What's different in > this case is that the license grant language is in one sentence, not > specifying a version, and the only reference to a version is in a > separate sentence that is just pointing to a license text rather than > unambiguously stating that the license grant itself is limited to > version 2. I'm less convinced by that, since the author gave notice of a specific version of the GPL, no matter what line the version number is on. It sounds like GPLv3 already existed when the notice was added, so a "reasonable kernel contributor" could be reasonably expected to say "or later" if they meant -or-later. But, still happy to discuss this one in a batch later, together with other similar variants. Allison
