Re: [Batch 10 patch 02/24] treewide: Replace GPLv2 boilerplate/reference with SPDX - rule 202

[Allison Randal <allison@lohutok.net>]

On 5/31/19 4:18 PM, Richard Fontana wrote:
> 
> The first sentence says the code "is licensed under the GNU General
> Public License." It doesn't specify a version. I could read that as
> meaning "is licensed under any version of the GPL" (regardless of how
> we interpret the later-versions clause in GPLv2). The fact that the
> following sentence apparently tried to point to the GPLv2 license text
> doesn't negate the possibility that the previous sentence was a grant
> of license for any version.
> 
> Those copyright notices said 2013, which was 5 years into 2013. If
> that means this license notice dates from 2013, by 2013 a reasonable
> kernel contributor [1] could be expected to know that an un-versioned
> reference to the GPL could refer at least to both GPLv2 and GPLv3 --
> that is, by that time it was common knowledge that there was more than
> one actively-used GPL in the world.
> 
> Anyway it seems very different to me from the more typical sort of
> GPLv2-only notice that alters the standard GNU notice by eliminating
> the "or later" language, so that the reference to "version 2" is in
> the same sentence as the license grant language. What's different in
> this case is that the license grant language is in one sentence, not
> specifying a version, and the only reference to a version is in a
> separate sentence that is just pointing to a license text rather than
> unambiguously stating that the license grant itself is limited to
> version 2.

I'm less convinced by that, since the author gave notice of a specific
version of the GPL, no matter what line the version number is on. It
sounds like GPLv3 already existed when the notice was added, so a
"reasonable kernel contributor" could be reasonably expected to say "or
later" if they meant -or-later.

But, still happy to discuss this one in a batch later, together with
other similar variants.

Allison