Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On Tue, 29 Jun 2010, Russ Allbery wrote: Russ Allbery r...@debian.org writes: I therefore propose adding GPL version 1 to the list of licenses said by Policy to be in common-licenses and asking Santiago to include a copy in base-files. I'm not including a diff since it would just create merge conflicts with the BSD diff proposed earlier today and because it's fairly obvious, although I can if people would prefer. Objections or seconds? This has now been merged for the next Policy release. Santiago, when you get a chance, could you release a new version of base-files that includes the GPL version 1 in common-licenses? Thank you! Thanks a lot, Russ. GPL-1 is now in common-licenses in base-files 5.8. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
Russ Allbery r...@debian.org writes: I therefore propose adding GPL version 1 to the list of licenses said by Policy to be in common-licenses and asking Santiago to include a copy in base-files. I'm not including a diff since it would just create merge conflicts with the BSD diff proposed earlier today and because it's fairly obvious, although I can if people would prefer. Objections or seconds? This has now been merged for the next Policy release. Santiago, when you get a chance, could you release a new version of base-files that includes the GPL version 1 in common-licenses? Thank you! --- a/policy.sgml +++ b/policy.sgml @@ -9407,14 +9407,15 @@ END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY p Packages distributed under the Apache license (version 2.0), the - Artistic license, the GNU GPL (version 2 or 3), the GNU LGPL - (versions 2, 2.1, or 3), and the GNU FDL (versions 1.2 or 1.3) - should refer to the corresponding files + Artistic license, the GNU GPL (versions 1, 2, or 3), the GNU + LGPL (versions 2, 2.1, or 3), and the GNU FDL (versions 1.2 or + 1.3) should refer to the corresponding files under file/usr/share/common-licenses/file,footnote p In particular, file/usr/share/common-licenses/Apache-2.0/file, file/usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic/file, + file/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-1/file, file/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2/file, file/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-3/file, file/usr/share/common-licenses/LGPL-2/file, -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
Andrew McMillan and...@morphoss.com writes: On Fri, 2010-06-11 at 11:35 +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: Ok, I agree that it would a good idea to include GPL-1 in common-licenses because of the high number of packages still using it. I'm sorry, but I disagree, for the time being. I do not believe that large numbers of packages are deliberately using GPL v1, and I think that anyone who is needs to confirm that explicitly since (I hope) many of them have moved on to less broken licenses such as GPL3 or GPL2. Hi Andrew, Did the subsequent discussion resolve your concerns about including the GPL v1 in common-licenses? I do think there are a lot of packages that are explicitly distributed under GPL v1 or later due to the Perl licensing situation. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On Mon, 2010-06-28 at 10:58 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: Andrew McMillan and...@morphoss.com writes: On Fri, 2010-06-11 at 11:35 +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: Ok, I agree that it would a good idea to include GPL-1 in common-licenses because of the high number of packages still using it. I'm sorry, but I disagree, for the time being. I do not believe that large numbers of packages are deliberately using GPL v1, and I think that anyone who is needs to confirm that explicitly since (I hope) many of them have moved on to less broken licenses such as GPL3 or GPL2. Hi Andrew, Did the subsequent discussion resolve your concerns about including the GPL v1 in common-licenses? I do think there are a lot of packages that are explicitly distributed under GPL v1 or later due to the Perl licensing situation. I guess this is the status quo, so we should continue with it. The weight of opinion seems against me :-) Cheers, Andrew. -- andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com+64(272)DEBIAN Does the turtle move for you? www.kame.net signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Russ Allbery wrote: Given that, while I'm very sympathetic to Santiago's argument, I also think that we should be able to represent in packages their upstream licensing statement and not be implicitly relicensing them under later versions of the GPL, and without including a bunch of copies of the GPL version 1. The usage of the license is high enough to qualify for common-licenses under our normal criteria: long license, used by over 5% of the binary packages in the archive, and used in packages that are installed on every system (perl-base). I therefore propose adding GPL version 1 to the list of licenses said by Policy to be in common-licenses and asking Santiago to include a copy in base-files. I'm not including a diff since it would just create merge conflicts with the BSD diff proposed earlier today and because it's fairly obvious, although I can if people would prefer. Ok, I agree that it would a good idea to include GPL-1 in common-licenses because of the high number of packages still using it. [ Therefore, please clone or reassign this bug back to base-files ]. But please let us not speak about implicit relicensing. There is no such thing as implicit relicensing, the same way there is no such thing as implicit licensing (do don't allow packages in Debian not having a proper license, do we?). The blurb in debian/copyright has usually two parts. The first part might have some legal value (or not, if we consider it might have typos and the only binding license is the one in orig.tar.gz). This program 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 2, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. The second part is for *informational purposes* only and we should not pretend it has legal value, not even in implicit sense. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. */ The FSF itself has recently changed the informational purposes part and they now point to the Web. Then we usually add this little blurb: On Debian GNU/Linux systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL'. which is an addon to the previous paragraph, so it's for informational purposes as well. Thus, I see no reason to use a versioned license when the license says version foo or later. If we say GPL is here and there is a policy that GPL is a symlink that always point to the latest version, then the paragraph saying GPL is here is equivalent to The latest version of GPL is here. That's a fact. No relicensing anywhere. I know this is not directly related to inclusion or not of GPLv1 in common-licenses, but as people keep talking about implicit relicensing I wanted to point that IMHO such thing does not exist. Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On Fri, 2010-06-11 at 11:35 +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: Ok, I agree that it would a good idea to include GPL-1 in common-licenses because of the high number of packages still using it. I'm sorry, but I disagree, for the time being. I do not believe that large numbers of packages are deliberately using GPL v1, and I think that anyone who is needs to confirm that explicitly since (I hope) many of them have moved on to less broken licenses such as GPL3 or GPL2. The blurb in debian/copyright has usually two parts. 'usually' is not sufficient. We need to explicitly know what the license is. Thus, I see no reason to use a versioned license when the license says version foo or later. Well, that's OK, perhaps, if you have confirmed that the software license of the upstream project has that text, except that *exactly* that text might be the *only* difference from the standard text. If we have a common license which is GPL-1-or-later in common licenses I would be OK with. I would not be ok with a common license of GPL-1 only, because (a) hopefully it is rare and (b) it is acknowledged to be old and broken, to some degree, and should be discouraged. Cheers, Andrew. -- andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com+64(272)DEBIAN Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On 11.06.2010 13:16, Andrew McMillan wrote: On Fri, 2010-06-11 at 11:35 +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: Ok, I agree that it would a good idea to include GPL-1 in common-licenses because of the high number of packages still using it. I'm sorry, but I disagree, for the time being. I do not believe that large numbers of packages are deliberately using GPL v1, and I think that anyone who is needs to confirm that explicitly since (I hope) many of them have moved on to less broken licenses such as GPL3 or GPL2. Yes for new code, but old code cannot be relicensed easily: all authors should agree, but GPLv1 is very old, in periods where contribution did not have an email and fix (live-long) email address was not common. and OTOH the unversioned GPL notices means any GPL license. [both for old programs and for careless new developement. BTW unilaterally moving version 1 and any later versio to version 2 [or 3] and later later is against the GPL. So I think that GPLv1 will remain important for the time being, and I would include it in common-license. ciao cate -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On Fri, 2010-06-11 at 14:14 +0200, Giacomo A. Catenazzi wrote: Yes for new code, but old code cannot be relicensed easily: all authors should agree, but GPLv1 is very old, in periods where contribution did not have an email and fix (live-long) email address was not common. It is: (a) old code (b) not a common license Regardless of whether it may once have been. BTW unilaterally moving version 1 and any later versio to version 2 [or 3] and later later is against the GPL. Nobody is suggesting that code licensed under v1 can be moved to v2 (or later) without the authority of the author(s). So I think that GPLv1 will remain important for the time being, and I would include it in common-license. I think the project should actively rate it as 'unimportant', at least partly in order to draw attention to the fact that it is using an obsolete license. If the code is v1-or-later then a trivial fork (by the original developer) is able to relicense it as v2-or-later or v3-or-later. If the original developer is unhappy with doing that, then they do have uncommon licensing desires. Cheers, Andrew. -- andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com+64(272)DEBIAN Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in? signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On 11.06.2010 14:25, Andrew McMillan wrote: If the code is v1-or-later then a trivial fork (by the original developer) is able to relicense it as v2-or-later or v3-or-later. If the original developer is unhappy with doing that, then they do have uncommon licensing desires. It would be illegal. You can act as if there is v2-or-later, but you cannot apply additional restriction on original code, so the old code is still v1-or-later. Note in GPLv3 there could be a proxy authority to allow increment base license number, but AFAIK few project define such proxy in the code, and it is only from GPLv3. PS: you can fork and add a new GPL-v2-or-later file, which automatically cause the aggregate work and binary to be GPL-v2-or-later, but: (1) debian/copyright is about pure source licenses; (2) the source file license is not changed. ciao cate -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:25:57 +1200, Andrew McMillan wrote: If the code is v1-or-later then a trivial fork (by the original developer) is able to relicense it as v2-or-later or v3-or-later. If the original developer is unhappy with doing that, then they do have uncommon licensing desires. Most perl modules are licensed under the same terms as Perl itself, and perl is licensed under GPL-1 or later or Artistic. Cheers, gregor -- .''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ -- GPG key IDs: 0x8649AA06, 0x00F3CFE4 : :' : Debian GNU/Linux user, admin, developer - http://www.debian.org/ `. `' Member of VIBE!AT SPI, fellow of Free Software Foundation Europe `-NP: George Harrison: If Not For You signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On Fri, 2010-06-11 at 14:40 +0200, gregor herrmann wrote: On Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:25:57 +1200, Andrew McMillan wrote: If the code is v1-or-later then a trivial fork (by the original developer) is able to relicense it as v2-or-later or v3-or-later. If the original developer is unhappy with doing that, then they do have uncommon licensing desires. Most perl modules are licensed under the same terms as Perl itself, and perl is licensed under GPL-1 or later or Artistic. Trying to get the significant number of upstream perl module copyright holders to fork and relicense would probably be a fruitless adventure. In fact upstream perl module developers may be reluctant to deviate from Perl's copyright, quoting the FSF [1]: License of Perl 5 and below This license is the disjunction of the Artistic License 1.0 and the GNU GPL—in other words, you can choose either of those two licenses. It qualifies as a free software license, but it may not be a real copyleft. It is compatible with the GNU GPL because the GNU GPL is one of the alternatives. We recommend you use this license for any Perl 4 or Perl 5 package you write, to promote coherence and uniformity in Perl programming. Outside of Perl, we urge you not to use this license; it is better to use just the GNU GPL. [1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#PerlLicense -- Matt Zagrabelny - mzagr...@d.umn.edu - (218) 726 8844 University of Minnesota Duluth Information Technology Systems Services PGP key 4096R/42A00942 2009-12-16 Fingerprint: 5814 2CCE 2383 2991 83FF C899 07E2 BFA8 42A0 0942 He is not a fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. -Jim Elliot signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
Andrew McMillan and...@morphoss.com writes: On Fri, 2010-06-11 at 11:35 +0200, Santiago Vila wrote: Ok, I agree that it would a good idea to include GPL-1 in common-licenses because of the high number of packages still using it. I'm sorry, but I disagree, for the time being. I do not believe that large numbers of packages are deliberately using GPL v1, and I think that anyone who is needs to confirm that explicitly since (I hope) many of them have moved on to less broken licenses such as GPL3 or GPL2. Perl is explicitly and deliberately distributed under the GPL v1 or any later version, and therefore every Perl module whose license is the same terms as Perl is also distributed under the GPL v1 or any later version. There are also other instances of the same issue. I suspect quite a few. For example, one of the licenses of libpam-krb5 is GPL v1 or later, which currently can't be properly represented in the copyright file without adding the full text of the GPL v1 to the copyright file. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
Santiago Vila sanv...@unex.es writes: Then we usually add this little blurb: On Debian GNU/Linux systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in `/usr/share/common-licenses/GPL'. which is an addon to the previous paragraph, so it's for informational purposes as well. Thus, I see no reason to use a versioned license when the license says version foo or later. If we say GPL is here and there is a policy that GPL is a symlink that always point to the latest version, then the paragraph saying GPL is here is equivalent to The latest version of GPL is here. That's a fact. No relicensing anywhere. This doesn't really matter a tremendous amount, but I wanted to explain my reasoning on this part for why I bring this up. The issue is the following clause of the GPL: 1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this General Public License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this General Public License along with the Program. particularly the last clause. We do not give the recipients of the package a copy of the GPL version 1 along with the Program, so it is therefore illegal for us to distribute the Program under the terms of the GPL version 1. So either we're breaking the license, or we're implicitly distributing the package under the terms of the GPL version that we *do* include with the package (either version 2 or version 3), taking advantage of the permission we're granted to relicense under a later version. I generally assume that we're doing the latter, since breaking the license sounds bad. :) -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:54:45 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: Given that, while I'm very sympathetic to Santiago's argument, I also think that we should be able to represent in packages their upstream licensing statement and not be implicitly relicensing them under later versions of the GPL, Ack, pointing to the -GPL symlink (and relying (and therefore relicensing) on the or later aspect) doesn't feel right to me; and it also involves coming up with lintian patches every now and then when the wording for same as Perl changes. I therefore propose adding GPL version 1 to the list of licenses said by Policy to be in common-licenses and asking Santiago to include a copy in base-files. I'm not including a diff since it would just create merge conflicts with the BSD diff proposed earlier today and because it's fairly obvious, although I can if people would prefer. Objections or seconds? Seconded. Copying debian-perl on this message since that's the set of developers who are most affected by this. Thanks! (Although that means some changes on our part, in dh-make-perl and in most of our packages :)) Cheers, gregor -- .''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ -- GPG key IDs: 0x8649AA06, 0x00F3CFE4 : :' : Debian GNU/Linux user, admin, developer - http://www.debian.org/ `. `' Member of VIBE!AT SPI, fellow of Free Software Foundation Europe `-NP: U2: With Or Without You signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
-=| gregor herrmann, Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 12:50:36AM +0200 |=- On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:54:45 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: I therefore propose adding GPL version 1 to the list of licenses said by Policy to be in common-licenses and asking Santiago to include a copy in base-files. I'm not including a diff since it would just create merge conflicts with the BSD diff proposed earlier today and because it's fairly obvious, although I can if people would prefer. Objections or seconds? Seconded. Seconded too. I must admit I am very surprised GPL-1 is not in common-licenses. Copying debian-perl on this message since that's the set of developers who are most affected by this. Thanks! (Although that means some changes on our part, in dh-make-perl and in most of our packages :)) Reading the above, I am left with the impression that our packages should point to GPL-1 one way or another, so having to change a few words is a lot less burden than including the license text in debian/copyright. Thanks for the heads up! I'll take care of dh-make-perl. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
Santiago Vila sanv...@unex.es writes: On Sun, 5 Aug 2007, Sam Hocevar wrote: There are still many packages that mention the GPL version 1 in their copyright file (around 350). Many Perl packages, but also Perl itself and widespread things like sed, joe, cvs, dict... There are also countless packages that are under the GPL without mentioning the version at all (more than 2,000 but I was unable to get a precise number), they should therefore be considered version 1 or above. This is why I believe it wouldn't hurt to ship the GPL-1 with base-files, even if most people are going to use any later version. It can be found here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.txt I delegate this decision to the policy group, as explained in base-files FAQ. As your proposal does not require a change in debian-policy, you would only need two seconds and no objections. However, my personal opinion is that the GPL v1 should be considered obsolete and we should deprecate it. The FSF would probably tell you that the GPLv1 has bugs which have been fixed in GPLv2 and GPLv3. We would be happier if we had less licenses to consider, not more. This has come up several times since the last activity on this bug, and now that I have a tool to check the licenses across all packages in Debian, I went and took a look at the usage. The result is that there is a minimum of 1,540 packages in Debian licensed under the GPL version 1 (possibly with the or-later clause). This is an undercount, since this is only picking up those packages that use a DEP-5 copyright file. There are also 10,116 packages that refer to the unversioned GPL symlink, and I know from personal experience at least some of those are also licensed under the GPL version 1 or later. Given that, while I'm very sympathetic to Santiago's argument, I also think that we should be able to represent in packages their upstream licensing statement and not be implicitly relicensing them under later versions of the GPL, and without including a bunch of copies of the GPL version 1. The usage of the license is high enough to qualify for common-licenses under our normal criteria: long license, used by over 5% of the binary packages in the archive, and used in packages that are installed on every system (perl-base). I therefore propose adding GPL version 1 to the list of licenses said by Policy to be in common-licenses and asking Santiago to include a copy in base-files. I'm not including a diff since it would just create merge conflicts with the BSD diff proposed earlier today and because it's fairly obvious, although I can if people would prefer. Objections or seconds? Copying debian-perl on this message since that's the set of developers who are most affected by this. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
reassign 436105 debian-policy thanks On Sun, 5 Aug 2007, Sam Hocevar wrote: Package: base-files Version: 4.0.0 Severity: wishlist There are still many packages that mention the GPL version 1 in their copyright file (around 350). Many Perl packages, but also Perl itself and widespread things like sed, joe, cvs, dict... There are also countless packages that are under the GPL without mentioning the version at all (more than 2,000 but I was unable to get a precise number), they should therefore be considered version 1 or above. This is why I believe it wouldn't hurt to ship the GPL-1 with base-files, even if most people are going to use any later version. It can be found here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.txt I delegate this decision to the policy group, as explained in base-files FAQ. As your proposal does not require a change in debian-policy, you would only need two seconds and no objections. However, my personal opinion is that the GPL v1 should be considered obsolete and we should deprecate it. The FSF would probably tell you that the GPLv1 has bugs which have been fixed in GPLv2 and GPLv3. We would be happier if we had less licenses to consider, not more. Thanks. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bug#436105: suggestion to add GPL-1 as a common licence
Package: base-files Version: 4.0.0 Severity: wishlist There are still many packages that mention the GPL version 1 in their copyright file (around 350). Many Perl packages, but also Perl itself and widespread things like sed, joe, cvs, dict... There are also countless packages that are under the GPL without mentioning the version at all (more than 2,000 but I was unable to get a precise number), they should therefore be considered version 1 or above. This is why I believe it wouldn't hurt to ship the GPL-1 with base-files, even if most people are going to use any later version. It can be found here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-1.0.txt -- Sam. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
