On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 10:56:04AM +0200, Gerfried Fuchs wrote: > Hi! Hi, > The policy says that packages should refer to the files in the > common-licences directory instead of quoting the licence text itself. > This is done, but I think there is one common mistake on a lot of > packages (not only games related ones): They point to the GPL symlink > instead of GPL-2. Actually this is not a mistake IMO. The GPL symlink should be "the latest released version" (well, appearantly not everyone agrees about that, even). Programs which are dual-licensed (or triple-, or whatever) may have all licenses linked in the copyright file, obviously. However, in case of "GPL version X or later" it is impossible to do that, since not all versions are known. It is reasonable to point to the GPL link and write something like: This program is licensed under the GNU General Public License, either version 2 of the license, or (at your option), any later version. The latest version of the GPL can be found here: ... Of course it would be even more complete to say: The latest version can be found here:..., version 2 can be found here:... But it is certainly not incorrect to point only to the latest version. The reason is that as a packager we must distribute the program. We can choose to accept only version 3, and distribute it as such. So we can even choose that our users cannot choose to use version 2 of the license. There is no reason for us to make that choice, but the fact that we can makes clear that it is acceptable to only point to the latest version, even if we must present all licenses which are available to the user. Practically, I think it is certainly useful to use the GPL link, because I think it is more likely that the software will change into "version 3 or later" than into "version 2 only" (but obviously I could be wrong about that). If we use the link, there is no problem if we don't notice the "version 3 or later" change, because it is still the correct license. Of course if programs change to "version 2 only", it is exactly the other way, and using the link means we need to do something when the change happens. > While it might be convenient to do so, I think it is wrong. When the > license states that it is "GPLv2 (or later)" it should IMHO point to the > GPL-2 file. Why? What it says is that the program is dual-licensed GPL2 and GPL3. I would assume that the link will soon point to GPL3 (if it doesn't, there is no difference anyway). Since we only point to one of the offered licenses, there is no reason why one is better to point to than the other. It may be best to point to both, and I certainly like the maintainability of using just the link: we don't even need to re-upload to show our users that they can accept a new license. > There are discussions going on what to do with the GPL > symlink, and some suggest that it should point to the GPLv3. Of course it should. It would be totally confusing if it didn't. But let's not have that discussion on this list. :-) > I don't think that a forced-upgrade is something that is really wanted > (and I doubt that the symlink change will get done). There is no forced upgrade. Users can choose to accept any version of the GPL (as long as it is not smaller than 2). The only difference is what we give them to read if they want the see the license. The best option is IMO to offer both version 2 and version "latest" (which is what the link should be). There is no reason to avoid the link; it certainly is a valid license for the program. > But that was also the reason with the sources.list file where it was > switched from the "stable" symbolic name directly to the release > codenames. There's a huge difference between automatically getting a newer (but offered by the copyright holder) license when asking for it, and having all software on your machine upgraded when you just ask for bugfixes. Thanks, Bas Wijnen -- I encourage people to send encrypted e-mail (see http://www.gnupg.org). If you have problems reading my e-mail, use a better reader. Please send the central message of e-mails as plain text in the message body, not as HTML and definitely not as MS Word. Please do not use the MS Word format for attachments either. For more information, see http://pcbcn10.phys.rug.nl/e-mail.html
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature