On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 08:10:06 +0200 Ulrich Mueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Should LICENSE changes require a revision bump? > > No, since it would be a waste of users' resources. > > For example, if a dev has missed a change from GPL-2 to GPL-3 (which I > guess is a common case), would you really have users reinstall the > package in this case? What would be the benefit? As an example, the user is developing a program under a licence compatible with GPL-3 but incompatible with GPL-2, he wants to extend it with the functionality provided by this library (lets assume the package in question is a library) and he is considering to statically link some bits from it. Now he can do the right way and read the whole web page from that package and learn all about it and all the other candidates, or just first apply a quick filter by checking the LICENCE file and then decide to look for another candidate. I personally would would go with the filtering approach to narrow my search and reduce the time I need to spend looking. As Another example, the user might statically link bits of the exact same library against a GPL-2 (not a GPL-2 or latter) program, just because he is misinformed by portage that the program is GPL-2 and then he gets into a legal problem. so, my point is that licences are very important in some environments and to some people, and having an inconsistently can cause serious legal problems to users. So it is very important to keep them in sync in all tree of upstream, portage tree and vdb tree. Yuri.
