On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 5:42 PM Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek <
zbyszek@in.waw.pl> wrote:
On Wed, Jun 02, 2021 at 01:31:15PM -0000, Benjamin Beasley wrote:
> > So, it doesn't really matter if two source files are distributed under the GPLv2+ license.
> > The resulting binary (i.e. /usr/bin/cdparanoia) will always be GPLv2.
> > […]
> > But Licensing Guidelines make clear that the License: field refers to the
> > binary packages not source ones.
> >
> > BR,
> >
> > Andrea
>
> The “effective license” approach you advocated is not mentioned in the packaging guidelines but has historical support in the wiki (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:FAQ#What_is_.22effective_license.22_and_do_I_need_to_know_that_for_the_License:_tag.3F). It has also come up on the fedora-legal list recently (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/legal@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/W57JRNLWVOT55D7TDF7VYFMJT5QMBEGR/).
FWIW, the licensing guidelines live on the wiki. There is nothing
"historical" about the Licensing:FAQ document, it is still the official
guide of how to interpret the Licensing:Main page.
I know Ben wrote something that disagrees with the document, but
I think he is wrong. It also goes against the long-established practice.
And if we want to change the rules, the document that specifies them
should be changed, a post on the mailing list is not enough.
> There is, I think, a valid question of how much mechanistic detail to apply to documenting the source files *that contribute to the binary RPM contents.* One approach, which I have favored in my packages, exhaustively lists licenses of such files. The other, which you have advocated, simplifies the license field into an “effective license” when clearly appropriate. Both philosophies seem to be well-established as acceptable. My view is therefore this patch seems to be correct but not absolutely required.
No, the patch is wrong. It's not super harmful, but it's still wrong.
So what should be the correct License then? According to [1], the one possibility is
License: (GPLv2 and GPLv2+) and LGPLv2
but according to [2] point 2, this should be shortened to
License: GPLv2 and LGPLv2
because GPLv2 is stricter. Should the patch be reverted with the comment explaining multiple licensing situations?
Regards,
Jiri