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

[Allison Randal <allison@lohutok.net>]

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?

It's worth talking about this further, especially if we decide a
reference to the COPYING file overrides an otherwise unversioned license
notice. It's somewhat tricky, since we don't know if those external
links actually did contain those specific license versions when the
license notice was added (did GPLv3 even exist when the license notice
was added?). But, I can make a reasonable argument that by choosing to
link to pages on gnu.org and opensource.org, the original author
anticipated FSF and OSI might make such changes in the future, and so
really intended the flexibility of GPL-2.0-or-later, rather than -only,
even though the text of the notice doesn't say "or later".

Allison