[Fedora-legal-list] License header of some KDE applications

[Richard Fontana]

On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 09:20:47PM +0100, Julian Aloofi wrote:
> Hello,
> in some KDE applications (for example yakuake) there is a quite uncommon GPL 
> header in the source files, which reads like this:
> 
>   This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
>   modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
>   published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of
>   the License or (at your option) version 3 or any later version
>   accepted by the membership of KDE e.V. (or its successor appro-
>   ved by the membership of KDE e.V.), which shall act as a proxy
>   defined in Section 14 of version 3 of the license.
> 
>   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 General Public License for more details.
> 
>   You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
>   along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.
> 
> 
> In the review for knights ( https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=674180 
> ) the question how to handle this came up. What would be the appropriate 
> License tag in the spec file?
> Would be nice if legal could shed some light on this :)

Ah, this is an interesting one. As the license notice points out,
GPLv3 introduces this concept of projects appointing a "proxy" who can
decide whether future versions of the GPL are acceptable or not, as an
alternative to both "GPLvn only" and "GPLvn or later". Maybe it's only
practical for Fedora to label this as "GPLv2 or GPLv3", and if in the
distant future the KDE organization also approved GPLv4 the license
tag could just be updated accordingly (much like any special license
change might be treated). Look to spot for the official answer though.

- RF