Re: GPL "+" question
Paul Tagliamonte <paultag@debian.org> writes:
> On Fri, May 29, 2015 at 03:09:34PM +0200, Ole Streicher wrote:
>> Same for me. However: the (L)GPL allows even an unmodified
>> redistribution under a later license.
> This is key -- redistribution. It doesn't change the license.
It does. Just look into the license (resp. the header, for simplicity):
| 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) any later version.
So, redistribution may change the license.
> If I get this file after you say it's GPLv3, it's still LGPLv2.1+ to
> me if I remove it from other works that change the distribution terms
No: We got the files from upstream, and upstream granted us certain
permissions for them (this is what the license actually does). Then we
are bound to this conditions.
We could, ofcourse, get the same files from somewhere else (f.e. from
the original author), and these files then can be used under his
conditions. But this is a different story.
For example, I can give you a file that I got under MIT license, and ask
you not to distribute this file -- then you are bound to this,
independently whether the file is MIT licensed or not. The only thing
you could to is to take the same file from somewhere else and distribute
that.
Or, as an other example (which is closer to Debian): when I packaged
eso-midas, I found that it contained a file "sys/msg.h" that is
originally from NetBSD (with the appropriate license). The specific file
in the upstream tarball, however, was relicensed by Apple with the APSL
(DFSG incompatible) [1]. Even if the file was the same as the free
version, I think that I did it right to remove the file from the tarball
and replace it with the original version.
> I originally thought there was a different question being asked; sorry
> about that (the terms used and not looking at the source didn't help :))
In my case, the files are modified; so I think there is no doubt that
the files are under src/wcs are GPL-3+.
> Unmodified, the license of the works is unchanged, even if we
> *distribute* under a different one.
Could you put a reference on this?
Best regards
Ole
[1] http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-1456.1.26/bsd/sys/msg.h
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