Hello Jörg,
On 3/8/26 15:38, Jörg Frings-Fürst wrote:
Hello,
first many thanks for your bug-report.
Let me also thank you for taking the time to analyze my report and reply.
Here are my arguments as a non-lawyer:
First, let's look at the general information in COPYING(.*).
There are two files in the root directory:
* COPYING contains only the GNU General Public License Version 3 as
its license.
* COPYING.LIB contains only the GNU Lesser General Public License
Version 3 as its license.
The .LIB extension clearly indicates that libunistring is generally
licensed under GPLv3+ and the lib directory under LGPLv3+.
I agree with the above statements, at lest in the root folder those
licenses are described.
The .LIB extension clearly shows that libunistring is licensed under
GPLv3+ and the lib directory under LGPLv3+. The global statement "It is
dual-licensed under the GNU LGPLv3+ or the GNU GPLv2+" is incorrect,
because the individual files in their respective sections each have
only one license.
Regarding this statement, let me disagree, my point here is that
individual files claim to be dual license, let me provide some examples
lib/unistring/cdefs
in debian/copyright it claims that it is LGPL-3+ which should be the
common described earlier, however the file itself says
* the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
or
* the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
lib/unicase/cased.c
in debian/copyright it claims that it is LGPL-3+ which should be the
common described earlier, however the file itself says
You can redistribute it and/or modify it under either
- the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published
by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3, or (at your
option) any later version, or
- the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version, or
- the same dual license "the GNU LGPLv3+ or the GNU GPLv2+".
There are only two examples, but this same pattern repeats across the
whole repository, individual files, I think all of them, report to be
dual licensed. I am not a lawyer, and of course this is more an upstream
issue since this mismatch creates confusion, but from my perspective,
the previous statements in debian/copyright were more accurate.
I just wanted to clarify my bug report to be in sync with you, but
probably I will need to reach upstream to make things a bit more clear.
Thanks again for your time.
Regards,
Walter
This is correctly reflected in the current debian/copyright file.
[quote]
Files: *
Copyright: 1995-2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License: GPL-3+
[...]
Files: lib/*
Copyright: 2001-2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License: LGPL-3+
[/quote]
Likewise, all licenses of the files that do not conform to the above
scheme are correctly entered in debian/copyright.
Therefore, I am closing this bug.
CU
Jörg
--
Walter Lozano
Collabora Ltd.
