Mark H Weaver (2015-07-26 18:54 +0300) wrote: > Alex Kost <alez...@gmail.com> writes: > >> I see that only several packages uses 'gpl3' license. And I don't >> really understand the cases when it should be used instead of 'gpl3+'. >> >> I looked at "aarddict" and "weechat". They have the same >> COPYING/LICENSE files as <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt>. So it >> should be gpl3+, right? > > The license of a program is determined by the copyright notices in the > files themselves, not by the mere existence of a copy of a license > somewhere in the tarball. > > Language like this in the files means gpl3+: > > ;;; GNU Guix is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it > ;;; under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by > ;;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at > ;;; your option) any later version. > > If the "or (at your option) any later version" language is missing, then > it's just gpl3. > > To ease the labor of looking at the copyright notices on every file, I > look at the corresponding Debian copyright file. Debian tends to do a > fairly thorough job of license checking. I search for the package using > http://packages.debian.org/<PACKAGE-NAME>, I select a package whose > version number is the same (or quite close) to the one I'm packaging, > and then I select the "Copyright File" link in the "Debian Resources" > section on the right side of the web page. > > Also beware that the Debian copyright file only documents licenses on > files that they have not removed. Just below the "Debian Resources" > section on the right is a section "Download Source Package". If you see > "DFSG" in the name of the original tarball file, that means that they've > removed files for copyright reasons. > > Hope this helps,
Yes, thank you for the explanation and the "Debian copyright file" hint. So I think, that the license of "weechat" should be changed to 'gpl3+'. I quickly looked at the source files and at <http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/changelogs//main/w/weechat/weechat_1.0.1-1_copyright> and there is "any later version" everywhere. I didn't look at other 'gpl3' packages, but I belive "weechat" is not the only package with a mistake in license field. (I should probably just walk through all these packages and fix licenses all at once) Also what to do with "flexbar"? It has neither COPYING/LICENSE file, nor copyright notices in the source files. As I mentioned earlier only "src/Flexbar.cpp" file has "(GPLv3)" in its commentary and nothing more. -- Alex
