[Monotone-devel] GPLv3 code in monotone

[Thomas Keller]

Hi!

This is a follow-up on
<https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=684822>, where I was asked
to clarify the license of the openSUSE monotone package.

Currently, this is stating GPLv2+, but the reporter needs some
clarification because we have some GPLv3+ code in the package
(src/{unix,win32}/parse_date.cc). From the original ticket:

-----------

oS:

| // Copyright (C) $YEAR $OWNERL
| //
| // This program is made available under the GNU GPL version 3.0 or
| // greater. See the accompanying file COPYING for details.
| //
| // This program is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
| // implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
| // PURPOSE.

The file itself is quite short and it looks as if the header may have
been added automatically, but this should be confirmed upstream.

-----------

me:

The copyright has been clarified with a proper year and owner note in
the most recent version (1.0, released on March 26th). I
submit-requested this new version already, but didn't got an answer so
far (#65356).

The question for me now (from a legal point of view) is whether it is a
problem for you (or anybody else) if a project that is tagged as GPLv2+
has single GPLv3+-licensed files in it?

-----------

oS:

> The question for me now (from a legal point of view) is whether it is
> a problem for you (or anybody else) if a project that is tagged as
> GPLv2+ has single GPLv3+-licensed files in it?

It is not a problem but it could mean that the entire resulting derived
work would be GPLv3+ rather than GPLv2+. If this is the case, the spec
file should state that the license is GPLv3+.

Therefore, it seems that we need to decide on whether or not the file is:

(a) used at all
(b) used in a copyright relevant way with GPLv2+ code (i.e. is a derived
work created)
(c) correctly licensed under GPLv3+ (i.e. perhaps it was a mistake by
upstream)

If (a) and (b) can be answered in the negative we don't (strictly
speaking) have to answer (c) - though it would be desirable generally.

-----------


I then answered that the files are used (a) and that it was not an
accident (c), but I'm unsure about the "derived work" clause. I'm seeing
the following solutions (ordered by impact):

1) document in README or somewhere else that parts of the code use
GPLv3+ and give packagers a hint what license they should use when they
package monotone
2) relicense the mentioned files as GPLv2+
3) relicense everything of mtn GPLv3+

Opinions anyone?
Thomas.

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