[aur-general] Licenses, GPL3 only

[Loui Chang]

On Thu 26 Aug 2010 13:12 +0200, Ronald van Haren wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Thu 26 Aug 2010 12:48 +0200, Ronald van Haren wrote:
> >> On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 12:40 PM, Loui Chang <louipc.ist at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > On Mon 23 Aug 2010 12:03 +0200, Philipp 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?
> >> >
> >> > Here's my proposed scheme:
> >> > GPL  = Any GPL license
> >> > GPL1 = GPL1 only
> >> > GPL2 = GPL2 only
> >> > GPL3 = GPL3 only
> >> >
> >> > If you want to use 2 and 3, just list them both in the licenses array.
> >> > Future proof.
> >> >
> >> I've never seen an applications under the 'any GPL" license, it's
> >> always GPL2 or higher....
> >
> > It exists as part of the license at any rate.
> >
> >> either way, it is never future proof. What for some reason people
> >> start to switch licenses to GPL3 or higher if/when GPL4 is
> >> removed...there can always be something.
> >
> > I'm very confused. Can you rephrase that?
> >
> >
> 
> sure... I'm doing five things at once so I didn't think much about
> what I was saying..
> 
> either way, most licenses say 'licensed under the GNU General Public
> License version 2 or, at your option any later version'.
> 
> In our current naming scheme this is what we call 'GPL', in your
> scheme I'm not sure how you would call it. Which was my first point.
> 
> My second point was that we don't know what the future will bring.
> Will new applications being licensed under GPL2 or later, GPL3 or
> later, GPL4, GPL4 or later... there are lots of options. There are
> lots of possibilities and I'm wondering if it is at all feasible to
> create a naming scheme which will fit all.
> 
> The way we currently have it seems to fit all current GPL packages.
> IMO GPL3 is still GPL3 only as there is no later GPL license. Correct
> me if I'm wrong but I think all GPL3 only packages in our repos have
> just GPL3 in the license array?

What really concerns us as distributors is what makes things clear and
simple. We can always use and distribute under the first available
license. Really there is no need for us to worry about 'any later
version' of a license. That's only something that app developers might
want to pay attention to if they're linking, forking or borrowing code.

In that case they bloody well read the documentation and not blame Arch
for incomplete (but still correct) license information.