Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Watch out for license changes to GPL-3.

[Dominique Michel <dominique.michel@citycable.ch>]

> Thus the questions of whether many/most individual ebuilds /could/ be 
> copyrighted or if so whether it's worth doing so.  Certainly, it's the 
> tree that contains the license, not the individual ebuilds, etc, which 
> give the copyright statement but little more.  Gentoo policy would seem 
> to be, then, that it's the work of the tree as a whole that's 
> copyrighted.  Individual ebuilds may or may not be, and it's /implied/ 
> (which isn't necessarily legally binding) that if they are, there'd be 
> little attempt at enforcement unless a significant portion of the tree 
> was copied/modified.
> 
I think at current gentoo policy is good. I don't want to have the possibility
to have individual licence for individual ebuild because that can block a
licence change if such a change become a necessity.

> That's a long and predictably controversial debate.  See all the 
> electrons spilled on it debating the Linux kernel, for instance.  While I 
> personally support the FSF and GPL3, there's a definitely valid position 
> held by some that the code return requirements of GPL2 are sufficient, 
> that Tivoization should be specifically allowed, because the code is 
> returned, even if it doesn't work on their specific product without the 
> signing keys and etc.
> 

It doesn't matter if gentoo tree is v2 or v3 in regard of tivoization because
no one single program in portage is linked against the tree or an eclass.

I also think at the tivoization issue is not valid for the patches in the
ebuild-xyz/files folder, because they are in the tree and the tree is under gpl
v2. 

So in fact, it doesn't matter in regard of tivoization if the tre is under v2
or v3. I am not a layer, but I will be very surprised if I am wrong on that
point.

I don't know if an individual patches in some ebuild-xyz/files folder can be
under v3 or v2 and later in order to be able to legally patch a gpl-v3 xyz
software.

The situation is: the ebuild-xyz have a patch under gpl-v2 in its files folder
because it is in the tree and the whole tree is v2 only. And the software xyz
is under gpl-v3. The problem is at I think at it will not be allowed by the
software xyz because gpl-v3 is not compatible with a patch under the gpl-v2
only licence. The patch's licence must be gpl-v2 or later, gpl-v3, or gpl-v3 or
later.

Dominique
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