Re: funding & viability questions of GPL enforcement.
> On Sat 15/Jul/2017 19:24:56 +0200 Bradley M. Kuhn wrote:
> > [...]
> > Finally, this is probably a good moment -- since this thread has erupted on
> > a Debian Mailing List -- to let everyone know that Conservancy also
> > organizes a GPL copyright aggregation project for Debian contributors as
> > well, see: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/#debian and
> > https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/aug/17/debian/.
Alessandro Vesely wrote:
> May I ask, in passing, why Debian (for packages like apt, say) did not
> switch to GPLv3?
I discussed in my talk at DebConf10 about how many Debian packages are
already outbound licensed under GPLv3, because Debian carries the default
version of GPL as GPLv3, by symlinking /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL to
GPL-3. The effect of that is that, for any package that simply says "GPL" or
points to /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL , Debian is licensing it it users
under GPLv3.
Of course, if Debian developers haven't added changes that are
GPLv3-or-later, the downstream user can always go back upstream and get a
copy licensed under GPLv2-or-later (etc.).
I note you asked specifically about apt, which is GPLv2-or-later. While I
think contributors to apt and other GPLv2-or-later packages should consider
whether GPLv3-or-later is a better license for them (I generally think GPLv3
is a very good licensing choice in most situations), I don't see any urgent
reason that developers should switch to GPLv3, in part because...
> Would such switch ease enforcement?
... I am not aware of any specific reasons why GPLv3 is more easily enforced
than GPLv2. The challenges that our community faces regarding enforcement,
which I outlined in my email yesterday, exist in roughly equal measure for
both GPLv2 and GPLv3.
> as well as Linux
As another poster pointed out, most (although not all) of Linux's copyrights
are GPLv2-only, and a change in license to GPLv2-or-later or GPLv3-or-later
would require extensive effort.
--
Bradley M. Kuhn
Distinguished Technologist of Software Freedom Conservancy
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