[oe] Question about automake licensing in recipe

[Maupin, Chase]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: openembedded-devel-bounces at lists.openembedded.org
> [mailto:openembedded-devel-bounces at lists.openembedded.org] On Behalf Of
> Graham Gower
> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 2010 5:18 PM
> To: openembedded-devel at lists.openembedded.org
> Subject: Re: [oe] Question about automake licensing in recipe
> 
> On 24 September 2010 05:44, Maupin, Chase <chase.maupin at ti.com> wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > I was digging around in the automake sources and I noticed that there is
> a top-level COPYING file that says automake is licensed under
> GPLv2.  However, in the lib directory there is another COPYING file that
> says GPLv3.  I was trying to figure out what LICENSE should be set to for
> automake when the sources contain both GPLv2 and GPLv3 code.  Should it be
> set to something like GPLv2/GPLv3?  I've read that GPLv2 and GPLv3 are
> incompatible
> (http://gplv3.fsf.org/wiki/index.php/Compatible_licenses#GPLv3-
> incompatible_licenses) so can a recipe even be marked as being both GPLv2
> and GPLv3?
> >
> > Any input would be appreciated here.
> 
> If the GPLv2 has the "or later version" clause and you are combining
> with GPLv3, then there is no incompatibility as the entire thing is
> then distributed under the GPLv3. If there is no "or later" clause,
> then its a problem that needs to be sorted out upstream.

Graham,

Thanks for the input.  I do not see the "or later" clause.  I see some discussion on FSF about updating the exceptions for tools like automake.  I guess this comes back to my question though of how we should mark the LICENSE field for the automake recipe until all the licensing is done?

also, has anyone thought about having a license type of GPLv3+exception or some other format to indicate that there is an active exception for a package?

> 
> -Graham
> 
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