[Fedora-legal-list] Please define "effective license" (for the love of consistency)

[Orcan Ogetbil]

Sorry for bringing this age old thread back up again. But I am still
getting contradictory claims. My original message was:

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 5:34 AM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
> 1) I came across another review with the same license question. The
> source files have one of the
> GPLv2, GPLv2+ and LGPLv2+ headers each. They get compiled and produce
> 1 final binary executable. None of the headers (or other source code
> files) go to the final RPM.
>

The conversation was concluded with the following explanation:


On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> On 12/12/2009 07:24 AM, Orcan Ogetbil wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:25 AM, Michael Schwendt  wrote:
>>>
>>> Fedora's Licensing Guidelines don't use the term "effective license"
>>> anywhere. Not even in the section on dual licensing, which is the scenario
>>> where the packager may choose to pick either license for the whole
>>> program.
>>>
>>> There is no such thing as an "effective license" related to the Mixed
>>> Source Licensing Scenario [1], because re-licensing a program, such as
>>> converting from LGPL to GPL, is not done implicitly or automatically.
>>>
>>
>> Thanks but that doesn't answer my question. Are so many people just
>> imagining things? Why does this inconsistency exist? I'd like to have
>> this cleared up so we won't have to discuss the same issue over and
>> over again.
>
> People are just confused. The issue has already been clarified. Is there
> still some specific confusion?
>
> Rahul
>

However, during the review of the package
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=537325
this issue came up again. Upon Michael Schwendt's warning, I have
changed the license tag of this package from "GPLv2" to "GPLv2+ and
LGPLv2+ and GPLv2", since there is no such thing as "the effective
license".

However the current reviewer points out that this is in contradiction
with the guideline

--
2. The source code contains some .c files which are GPLv2 and some other .c
   files which are GPLv2+. They're compiled together to form an executable.
   In this case, the stricter license wins, so the resulting executable is
   GPLv2. The License tag should read: License: GPLv2
   Note that you do NOT need to list GPLv2 and GPLv2+ in the License tag.
--
from https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing/FAQ#How_should_I_handle_multiple_licensing_situations.3F

So I am back where I started. There is clearly a contradiction between
what I was advised here on last December and the above guideline.

Which one is correct?

Thanks,
Orcan