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

[Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com>]

860895On Fri, May 31, 2019 at 10:05 AM Allison Randal
<allison@lohutok.net> wrote:
>
> On 5/29/19 2:08 PM, John Sullivan wrote:
> > Richard Fontana <rfontana@redhat.com> writes:
> >>>
> >>>   the code contained herein is licensed under the gnu general public
> >>>   license you may obtain a copy of the gnu general public license
> >>>   version 2 at the following locations http www opensource org
> >>>   licenses gpl license html http www gnu org copyleft gpl html
> >>>
> [...]
> >>
> >> I am inclined to disagree with the conclusion here. This seems
> >> ambiguous as to the applicable version. At least it ought to merit
> >> further discussion.
> >
> > Me too.
>
> To make sure I understand, the source of the ambiguity you're
> identifying is the external links to:
>
> - https://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.html (which lists GPLv2
> and GPLv3), and
>
> - http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html (which is now redirected to GPLv3)
>
> Yes?

That wasn't what I was focused on though it could also be worth
considering. Here again for convenience is the license notice text:

* The code contained herein is licensed under the GNU General Public
* License. You may obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License
* Version 2 at the following locations:
*
* http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.html
* http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

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.

Richard

[1] Yes I just made up a new legal standard. :)