[Fedora-legal-list] xorg-x11-drv-wacom license

Paul W. Frields stickster at gmail.com
Wed Feb 17 19:07:08 UTC 2010


On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 02:14:56PM +1000, Peter Hutterer wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> During a review of the wacom project I found this gem in most of the 
> source files (highlights mine):
> 
>   * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
>   * modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
> 					^^ GPL
>   * as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
>   * of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
>   *
>   * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
>   * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>   * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
>   * GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
>         ^^ LGPL
>   *
>   * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
>    						^^ GPL
>   * along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
>   * Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 
> 02111-1307, USA.
> 
> So the first paragraph explicitly states that the software is GPLv2+ 
> (and the last paragraph suggests the same). The second paragraph refers 
> to the LGPL. Ping, the upstream maintainer suggested that it "Must be a 
> copy/paste error."
> The project itself ships the tarballs exclusively with the GPL document. 
> Back in the day it used to contain a LGPL-licensed part but that part 
> has since been removed.
> 
> I just wanted to double-check that this is in fact counts as GPLv2 or 
> whether it requires GPLv2 and LGPLv2 or some similar tag.
> Also, some advice on whether it is appropriate to correct this error 
> upstream without legal repercussions would be much appreciated. Both 
> Ping and I (the two maintainers) agree that GPL is the intended license.

I seem to recall we've had similar situations in the past, in which an
email from at least one of the upstream lead maintainers clarifying
their intent sufficiently resolved the problem.  Would it be difficult
to get such an email?

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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