Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Solving the problem of huge number of wrong LICENSES=*GPL-[23]

["Paweł Hajdan, Jr." <phajdan.jr@gentoo.org>]

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On 26/08/2018 12:53, Mart Raudsepp wrote:
> The common issue here is that upstream COPYING files really do only
> talk about one of the versions. And then you get to validate or source
> files to be sure that they do have a "or later" clause in them. And
> then on each bump you ideally should validate it again, etc, that no
> sources without "or later" allowance are in there...

Yup, precise tracking of license metadata can be a pain.

I'm not really sure if that level of it is worth for us as a distro. For
_importing_ other project's source code directly into one's project
precise license compatibility matters a lot. That's not the scenario
we're in. I see LICENSES as mostly a mechanism for end users to accept
or reject EULAs etc, and I'm curious what are other common scenarios.

Michał, could you elaborate on why not distinguishing more precisely
between these GPL variants in LICENSES is a _problem_ ? I can certainly
see the information is not always accurate, but it's not obvious to me
how severe is the downside, what are the consequences in practice.

Paweł


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