[aur-general] Licenses, GPL3 only

[Philipp Überbacher]

Excerpts from Ronald van Haren's message of 2010-08-23 12:36:52 +0200:
> On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 12:21 PM, Philipp Überbacher
> <hollunder at lavabit.com> wrote:
> > Excerpts from Ronald van Haren's message of 2010-08-23 12:06:24 +0200:
> >> On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 12:03 PM, Philipp <hollunder at lavabit.com> wrote:
> >> > Hi,
> >> > I just looked up the GPL notation again.
> >> > Here's the relevant excerpt from the wiki:
> >> >
> >> > http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Packaging_Standards
> >> >
> >> > ..
> >> > The (L)GPL has many versions and permutations of those versions.
> >> > For (L)GPL software, the convention is:
> >> >
> >> >    * (L)GPL - (L)GPLv2 or any later version
> >> >    * (L)GPL2 - (L)GPL2 only
> >> >    * (L)GPL3 - (L)GPL3 or any later version
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Now besides that this is obviously confusing there's another problem.
> >> > How would you specify that a program is GPL3 only?
> >> >
> >>
> >> Since when is GPL4 released?
> >>
> >> Ronald
> >
> > It isn't afaik, but that doesn't matter.
> > Both the GPL2 and GPL3 text contain something along the lines of:
> > ", or (at your option) any later version."
> >
> > You have to remove that to say it's GPL2 or GPL3 only.
> >
> > Just because GPL4/5/6/.. doesn't exist yet it doesn't mean you can't
> > say that your program can't be redistributed using those licenses.
> >
> > I'm a bit conservative in this case, I rather wait until a license
> > exists before I say that my program can be distributed using said
> > license, hence my program is GPL3 only.
> > --
> 
> Well obviously, but GPL4 can be as far as 10 years away, if it will be
> released at all. Until that time gpl3 or later is equal to gpl3 as
> there is nothing later. I presume if gpl4 will be released a similar
> transition can be made like was done after gpl3 was released. Most
> likely gpl3 will become gpl3 only and... well we can discuss that when
> the time is there.

Well, yes, for Arch it makes no difference at this time, for my program
it does make a difference, so yeah, it's a correctness thing.

> It doesn't make much sense to do this now, it should have been done
> when we introduced this scheme (maybe it even was, I don't recall) and
> now we should just wait for when it needs fixing.
> You can always file a bug if a package is distributed under the wrong license.
> 
> Ronald

Yep, it very much looks like the 'or later' wasn't considered when the
scheme was introduced, else it would have been GPL2 and GPL2+ or
something right from the start, not the confusing mess it is now.
-- 
Philipp

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