New upstream changing license, typo and SPDX-License-Identifier
Hi all,
I'm working with upstream of winetricks (in CC) on clarifiying/changing
the license of some files.[1]
1. LGPL-2+ --> LGPL-2.1+
========================
One has a notice for the "GNU Lesser General Public License" v2 (or
later).[2] However in v2 the LGPL was the "GNU *Library* General Public
License, while it only became the "GNU *Lesser* General Public License"
in v2.1. The project ships a COPYING file[3] (since nearly the
beginning of the projects history), identical to
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.txt
It's clear that the project aims for license compatibility with Wine
(LGPL-2.1+), but I assume this is not relevant for my first question:
Is it ok to simply change the license notice to 2.1+?
The current maintainer is not the original author (whom we've
contacted), and more importantly the file had lots of contributors (too
hard to contact all).
I think this can be handled simply as a typo fix, given the name/version
inconsistency and the content of the COPYING license.
But then again the LGPL 2.1 states that we have to "[...] publish on
each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty;
keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the
absence of any warranty[...]".
2. SPDX-License-Identifier
==========================
Currently some files (small helper scripts, luckily only by authors we
can ask for permission) have a custom license notifier for LGPL-2.1 only
(but not later).[4] I'd like to change this (with the authors'
permission). To respect the wish for a short license notice in these
files, I've suggested to use the SPDX-License-Identifier instead:
-# This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
-#
-# This is free software, placed under the terms of the GNU
-# Lesser Public License version 2.1, as published by the Free
-# Software Foundation. Please see the file COPYING for details.
+# SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1+
and to add a note in COPYING:
+Note:
+Individual files contain the following tag instead of the full license
+text.
+
+ SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1+
+
+This enables machine processing of license information based on the
+SPDX License Identifiers that are here available:
+http://spdx.org/licenses/
I've seen this in other projects, but it seems not to be wildspread.
Is this sufficient to determine the license?
Is it sufficient to disclaim any warranty?
Thanks in advance!
jre
[1] https://github.com/Winetricks/winetricks/pull/729
[2] https://github.com/Winetricks/winetricks/blob/master/src/winetricks:
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
# modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
# License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
# version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
# version.
[3] https://github.com/Winetricks/winetricks/blob/master/src/COPYING
[4] e.g.
https://github.com/Winetricks/winetricks/blob/master/src/linkcheck.sh
Reply to: