[oe] [PATCHv2] recipe licenses: update recipe LICENSE fields

[Frans Meulenbroeks]

2010/10/11 Koen Kooi <k.kooi at student.utwente.nl>:
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> Hash: SHA1
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> On 11-10-10 20:14, Maupin, Chase wrote:
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: openembedded-devel-bounces at lists.openembedded.org
>>> [mailto:openembedded-devel-bounces at lists.openembedded.org] On Behalf Of
>>> Frans Meulenbroeks
>>> Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 12:41 PM
>>> To: openembedded-devel at lists.openembedded.org
>>> Subject: Re: [oe] [PATCHv2] recipe licenses: update recipe LICENSE fields
>>>
>>> 2010/10/11 Chase Maupin <chasemaupin03 at gmail.com>:
>>>> * While verifying the licensing for the packages I am building
>>>>  into my file system I found that for some packages the
>>>>  LICENSE value set in the recipe was either incorrect or
>>>>  generic and not detailed enough.  This patch is my attempt
>>>>  to update the LICENSE fields for these packages to match
>>>>  the actual versions of the licenses in the sources.
>>>>
>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>> -LICENSE = "GPLv2"
>>>> +LICENSE = "GPLv2+"
>>>
>>> Doe we want this?
>>> I think most GPLv2 code carries the clause:
>>>
>>> "This program is free software; 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."
>>>
>>> Yet currently virtually all of these have GPL or GPLv2 as LICENSE
>>
>> Frans,
>>
>> My original version of this patch was just changing GPL to GPLv2 for example.  But I was asked about whether it should be GPLv2+ which I guess is more indicative of the "or later" clause.  Does anyone have good guidance here on how to denote things that are GPLv2 only for now (like git which Linux has a note in the COPYING file about it being GPLv2) and things that are GPLv2 or later version?  I'm trying for consistency here but I guess there doesn't seem to be a set policy for how the LICENSE field should be set.
>
> The current policy is:
>
> GPLv1 -> GPL version 1
> GPLv1+ -> GPL version 1 or later
> GPLv2 -> GPL version 2
> GPLv2+ -> GPL version 2 or later
> GPLv3 -> GPL version 3
> GPLv3+ -> GPL version 3 or later
>
> This was done to make it immediately clear which GPL license it's using
> so you can decide to drop GPLv2+ and GPLv3 from your manifest if you
> want secure boot or enforce patents.
>
> regards,
>
> Koen

I'm not sure if it is a policy. Haven't seen it being pulished as such.
Having said that, I have no problems with it (although there is no
problem with enforcing patents or so for v2+ , as that still falls
under the v2 umbrella).

I guess most of our recipes that say GPLv2 are wrong and are v2+.
It might be hard to distinguish between these though, it could well be
that the license file says v2 and a comment in the code says v2+.
Glad I do not have to deal with this any more....

Frans