Re: machine readable copyright v1 and "GPL version 2 or later"

[Gergely Nagy <algernon@balabit.hu>]

Andreas Noteng <andreas@noteng.no> writes:

> Hello, in one of my packages I have multiple files paragraphs with
> license GPL-2+, at the end I have a standalone license paragraph labeled
> GPL-2, this generates a lintian warning about missing license paragraph
> GPL-2+. Shouldn't lintian ignore the +, because it only means this
> version or, at your choice, any later version? I think it would be wrong
> to label the GPL-2 license paragraph GPL-2+, because this text is the
> exact text of version 2, even if you can choose to use any later
> version.

Lintian is correct. GPL-2 and GPL-2+ are different, and in the License:
section, you still need to expand the license, at least as far as the
short "This program is free software..." paragraphs, and that MUST be
different between GPL-2 and GPL-2+.

> What if you have both GPL-2 and GPL-2+ files paragraphs?

Then you will have to have a GPL-2 and a GPL-2+ License section, where
one says:

License: GPL-2+
 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
 under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published
 by the Free Software Foundation, or (at your option) any later version.
 [...]

And the other:

License: GPL-2
 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
 under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published
 by the Free Software Foundation.
 [...]

Notice the difference between the two.

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