[oe] Question about automake licensing in recipe

[Graham Gower]

On 24 September 2010 21:24, Maupin, Chase <chase.maupin at ti.com> wrote:
>
>> -----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?
>

I suppose you could mark it as GPLv3+violation...?

Basically, automake have to contact all their contributors to allow
their GPLv2 code to be distributed under GPLv3. Or they have to pull
the GPLv3 code out.

-Graham