[Fedora-packaging] License landscape (and question of best pratice)

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2006-03-08 at 11:09 +0100, Iago Rubio wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 12:49 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > On Tue, 2006-03-07 at 11:12 +0000, Jose' Matos wrote:
> > > 	While searching for tags used in the License field for Extras I got this 
> > > result:
> > 
> > >       1 GPL version 2 or newer
> > >       1 GPL version 2 or later.
> > >       1 GPL version 2 or later
> > >       1 GPLv2
> > IMO, all these above are superfluous and should be changed into "GPL",
> > because current "GPL" always implies "GPLv2 or later/newer".
> 
> Not all authors agree with this.
> 
> [quote from="http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/1/25/273"]

Not quite. 

The GPL and must not be modified:

<cite>
                    GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                       Version 2, June 1991

 Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
     59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
 Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
 of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
</cite>

Note the last sentence. 

I.e. any package claiming to be GPL'ed must be licensed with "this
GPL" (rsp. predecessors or successors) or it doesn't qualify as GPLed.

> The Linux kernel has always been under the GPL v2. Nothing else has
> ever been valid.
> 
> The "version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" 
> language in the GPL copying file is not - and has never been - part of the 
> actual License itself. It's part of the _explanatory_ text that talks 
> about how to apply the license to your program, and it says that _if_ you 
> want to accept any later versions of the GPL, you can state so in your 
> source code.
> 
> [/quote]
> 
> 
> So at least the GPLv2 one - being it the Linux kernel - should remain
> GPLv2. 

I don't understand what you want to say here.

Are you trying to say, that we should emphasize there different versions
of the GPL in an rpm's "license:" tag?

I don't see much sense in this, because

1. An rpm's "license:" tag is informative, and by no means can be
considered legally binding. The legally binding text is that contained
in the detached license text and that contained in individual source
files.

2. At present, practically all "GPL'ed" packages are "GPLv2", because
GPLv1 is dead for 15 years and GPLv3 has not been released yet.

I.e. as I see it, a license:-tag "GPL" is identical to "GPLv2".

Ralf