Re: upstream changing from GPL-2+ to GPL-3+ without copyright holders permission
On Tue, Aug 06, 2019 at 09:18:23AM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
> Many authors provide conflicting license statements. It's not
> unusual. In the extreme case, it makes the software undistributable
> and unsuitable for Debian.
I know, conflicting statements are a serious problem. But that's a
different issue.
>
> > If those unwritten exceptions are common, I've probably violated
> > authors' whises a lot of times already :(
>
> I was mainly talking about written clarifications, not unvoiced
> thoughts of the authors.
Then I agree, written clarifications should be followed if possible.
But, if those clarifications are not part of the license, and they are
only suggestions, authors should be completely fine when they are
ignored. If they are not, they must be part of the license, otherwise I
consider it lying on the actual distribution terms, and it is unfair.
Vim editor says: "Vim is Charityware. You can use and copy it as much as
you like, but you are encouraged to make a donation for needy children
in Uganda". It is not part of the license, so Vim is included in Debian.
And it seems to me that very few users of Vim are actually doing that,
but it should be fine since it's only a suggestion (I hope).
There are religion-based statements in music software included in
Debian, that I choose to not follow because it will be against my own
convictions. I hope the author is fine with that, otherwise I will
consider the program non-free and start writing bug reports for those
programs to be removed from Debian.
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