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

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 7:15 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 2018-08-26 at 13:09 +0200, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote:
> > 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.
> >
>
> I'm not aware of any major implications.  However, I think that if we
> provide for the distinction, the distinction should be used correctly.
>

IMO QA policy ought to be that the license is correct.

How much time/effort goes into policing the policy in the case of
2/3/2+/3+ is a different matter.  If people want to do it, great, but
IMO it isn't adding tremendous value.  I doubt we have any users
relying on license filtering to distinguish between GPL2/2+.  If
somebody files a bug pointing out an incorrect license it should be
fixed as a matter of policy, but I'm not sure more than that is
necessary in this particular case.  If we were talking about nonfree
licenses being missed that would be more critical.

-- 
Rich