From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5E4E5138350 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:05:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 1E9CFE089E; Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:05:22 +0000 (UTC) Received: from cloudsdale.the-delta.net.eu.org (cloudsdale.the-delta.net.eu.org [IPv6:2a01:4f8:1c17:4b6d::1]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5421FE089A for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:05:21 +0000 (UTC) Received: by cloudsdale.the-delta.net.eu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id c6dbb9fd for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:05:17 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed; d=hacktivis.me; h=date :from:to:message-id:references:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:in-reply-to; s=20190711_142157; bh=MS FE8H1rzNBwA2mpauLBQW1SWSTTuuHOKGRFrIYcrjU=; b=RvvtJXaFhpoEIh0HT9 fySAXVKMKTfLN8dLnUTmZwEolu8fkl10acxe1K5OS9Udb9BpoJ2F7/P9zOiK/VW4 72nQe8SnmotR0oAFNL5VkJmoqIiC7abPb8FvlcUW0OXdTy6vGQkb3n1WDG+1ttZv 8vJ5DqHS0MA6xcIlCxB6uhm80DKr7cMNcrvIP/fEgiWqgIL6e590E9g2rdN18qhT l1VyawKlbqJ4T15me/rH5/GnHIJwAAM+IjXEtSc1jI79xyGzwOqAb9SRJh5bvbNC yS31NnqLIiOQ9JqAD7QKfBrTfe39SA475meXzWEdKqI8e9iARdFFwY3sToeVIwvh 4HpX83gYTUPQvziAjTdVXSEeiuM1UWLY4qkUzDje6DBwpP8p3gL0Dua5n7vSzOSv PdY0KE0QalgzdBoPkra46fkMURGcE1nYrdVXxuYtvJTUe04Guskkz7FE9m1nkRIq i/uQHDvTYJi7e6KRvX8f6pGD+vYPv+dVdUwq2pD6HzrM/GsAAAhiB/2PhqE03qM3 lTmGkJDoiq9q1LZK0N3RWrrK/1FkOtUXTCV7KhVRc15Xd/HzxO2nmrC2HkRgN0hj 55SLGUH9l5ZXh0IbdtmHZq6MYrO/9vM4fQHZVMP+yxJvfK3Wd/McHfeRqfEZSuxq Ui1Q1lpppTiV53bYPgwahuDMQ= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=hacktivis.me; h=date:from:to :message-id:references:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:in-reply-to; q=dns; s=20190711_142157; b= LgAzkC8dxBhUN+Hk9sOinwIGpSMgRqFIRaSgcyY+s5R1xbYvMYNAAFlhDwnUXX74 4u+qDLMM+x5hhwfkoD39WQ68zoIg2cVJt/5QsGUunbdmfD+MLfaFcijHrY8zFCFn LBVZqR2OYzsnR5eASC+oBgEFc4y0h86Z0QNK2rN6+q9ww24lkXGAJbX2TPkEpxC8 0LMiSytkRrL6Q/Usxm33j+CuVbIfvQhKOlR0olijQ5JuBYxbReYGi/WN4T+yboCj JR8zUtLBqau9kZC1nbgWlVPRY+cK6AKFb+NKLGDHCQlOZLtQxAmxV+R4mQ6a+rL7 B8CxTNqckxnPe29a+ZGnMrwiFia/NtzAS1ENUOxhg6EoZmHp0HYHDMIpHkpMPX34 4ldelCoJaZ5DtXZ89YbWYaITT8WxwyGveiPIUlr7HAgANnoOmCJLaUGPDAezKmQs 6txVQmTN/6xezf0eRmLZeILB544E2sqZCXIJoXrdo5So9LP36I3LG7zzqdfATEas 0lCMsXgWv4nz1GiuUMd4Nul4bom8KWfC69bfewktp02kayUblL8SgXz9YeXP1zVb kb4fApZUp+JJRF0P3UjsZVUy8mY5e+JXWdjLAgaEeOcAUXV6xfSwjy8GvDAWHj7W MdXoPR6Gav/L/1S2H68YlGphxx7U8DWsxmLhwJZUm/8= Received: from localhost (cloudsdale.the-delta.net.eu.org [local]) by cloudsdale.the-delta.net.eu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTPA id 13d7ed88 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2020 15:05:17 +0000 (UTC) Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 16:05:17 +0100 From: "Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier" To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Should we allow "GPL, v2 or later" for ebuilds? Message-ID: <20200211150517.GA29434@cloudsdale.the-delta.net.eu.org> References: <20200130112034.GH16867@cloudsdale.the-delta.net.eu.org> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org X-Auto-Response-Suppress: DR, RN, NRN, OOF, AutoReply MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13) X-Archives-Salt: 8df354d1-5378-410f-9017-9d52b6e52bfe X-Archives-Hash: 07de084be82e524d46396b6a13a9e7de [2020-01-30 08:19:08-0500] Rich Freeman: > On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 6:20 AM Haelwenn (lanodan) Monnier > wrote: > > [2020-01-27 12:41:26+0100] Ulrich Mueller: > > > So, the question is, should we allow ebuilds > > > # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, v2 or later > > > in the repository, or should we even encourage it for new ebuilds? > > > > > > I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, I think > > > that GPL-2+ should generally be preferred because it offers better > > > compatibility. For example, the compatibility clause in CC-BY-SA-4.0 > > > won't work with GPL-2. > > > > Is there another reason for GPL-2+ than just compatibility? > > Because I quite find the "or later" thing to be quite a scary one as > > whatever will come up next as a GPL will become applicable and it feels > > quite weird to me to have a license that can evolve to whatever > > license over time. > Really the main threat (IMO) is that the code could be de-copylefted. > They could make GPL v4 a copy of the BSD license, and now anything > that was v2+ is effectively BSD and can be used in non-FOSS software > without issue. I guess that isn't any worse than the previous case of > it instead being merged into some other v4 variant that you can access > the source for but prefer to avoid because of something else in the > license, except now you might not see the code at all. Yeah, I quite share this opinion/view, with also the scary wonder of who can author a GPL-4 license as there doesn't seems to be any restriction for this in the license, just a "or later". > Another solution to this problem is the FLA - which is something we've > talked about but shelved until we've sorted out some of our other > copyright issues which were thorny enough. Perhaps we could consider > taking that up again. Without getting into the details it is a bit > like a copyleft-style copyright assignment, which isn't actually an > assignment. We envisoned it being voluntary and would allow any > contributor to give the Foundation the authority to relicense their > contributions, with a number of restrictions, like the new license > being FOSS. I'd have to dig up the latest version and take a look at > it again. Basically instead of trusting the FSF you'd be trusting the > Foundation instead, but there are some limitations on what they'd be > allowed to do, and if they violate those limitations the agreement > would be canceled and the rights would revert back to whatever was on > the original contribution, which would probably be whatever the author > originally wanted. That said, I'm not sure it really provides a whole > lot more protection over what happens except for the fact that > Foundation members have more say in how the Foundation operations than > the FSF, if only because the number of people allowed to vote are > limited to a relatively small pool Gentoo contributors, at least > compared to the entire FOSS community. I guess the FLA would be really interesting to have to get the quite useful flexibility of relicensing but keeping it to Gentoo Foundation to avoid giving this flexibility to everyone. Maybe it could for now be a simple agreement on putting your code to the Gentoo Foundation under the GPL-2+ but it would be published under the GPL-{2,3,…}?