On Thu, Aug 17, 2017 at 06:00:22PM -0400, Wheeler, David A wrote: > W. Trevor King: > > Is this proposal different from [1]? The only think I can see is that the > > old > > “GPL-2.0 by itself is unclear” issue is now being explicitly embraced > > (while [1] > > listed it as a potential issue). > > > > Also, do we have a preferred phrasing for a grant like: > > > > 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 of the License, or > > (at your option) version 3 of the License. > > > > Will that be: > > > > a. GPL-2.0-only OR GPL-3.0-only > > The "ONLY" would be an operator, so I'd expect to see: > (GPL-2.0 ONLY OR GPL-3.0 ONLY)
That's certainly possible as well, and it would be easier to parse
with the space. But you could also have an ‘-only’ operator with no
space (like we currently use ‘GPL-2.0+’ instead of ‘GPL-2.0 +’).
Aside from ease-of-parsing, I don't see a technical reason to prefer
one over the other.
> We haven't written the specifics yet, but if ONLY is an operator, we
> could define it to mean "all the licenses on the left-hand-side
> *only* allow those specified versions". If we defined it that way,
> then this could be written as: (GPL-2.0 OR GPL-3.0) ONLY
That works too, although if ONLY applies to a license expression
(vs. applying to a license short identifier) there's no place to store
“does ONLY apply” metadata. For example, it becomes more complicated
to report
(GPL-2.0 OR MIT) ONLY
as nonsensical (because MIT is unversioned).
> Note that in most cases with the GPL we don't need this at all;
> usually licenses are "GPL-2.0+" or "GPL-3.0+". But clearly it's
> important to be able to capture the other cases.
And to bring in a more complicated case where a distributable ONLY
doesn't help, consider a slightly altered version of the KDE example
that skips LGPL-2.1 [1]:
LGPL-2.0 OR LGPL-3.0+
It's clear that versioning has been taken into account, and none of
those licenses are the ONLY allowed choice. Do we want to require
users to say:
LGPL-2.0 ONLY OR LGPL-3.0+
or do we want to document that any LGPL expression which addresses
versioning is sufficient without the explicit (and somewhat
misleading in the expression context) ONLY?
> If SPDX can at least make it easier to see when we don't know (yet),
> that'd be a big help.
SPDX (the spec) allows this distinction. SPDX license expressions do
not. More on this in [2] and the “I just found this license text and
am not sure about the grant” entry in [3].
> > * Add a ‘PROXY {TEXT}’ operator for the GPL-3.0's proxy clause [3].
> > This would be on the same footing as -only and +.
>
> Handling arbitrary text embedded in a license expression is suddenly
> more complicated & doesn't seem terribly useful. If I need to know
> who the proxy is, I'll need to read the license in more detail
> anyway.
If the proxy was included in the license expression, then why would
you need to read the license (grant) in more detail? You'd use the
PROXY operator when the grant invoked the proxy clause in the usual
way, just as we currently have + when the grant invokes the “any later
version” clause in the usual way. Non-standard invocations would need
custom entries (like folks currently do for KDE [4]).
> If you simply want to show that there *is* an identified proxy, I
> guess I can see that being useful. Can we handle that as an
> exception, e.g., "GPL-3.0 WITH PROXY"?
If the consensus is that including the proxy information is too much,
I'd at least like to see this form. Knowing that future versions may
be marked as allowable in the future seems important, regardless of
whether the grantor is the FSF (in which case you'd use ‘GPL-3.0+’) or
someone else (in which case you'd use ‘GPL-3.0 PROXY…’).
Cheers,
Trevor
[1]: https://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx/2011-May/000390.html
Subject: license name question
Date: Wed May 25 09:43:56 MDT 2011
[2]:
https://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/or-later-vs-unclear-disambiguation#Issue
[3]:
https://wiki.spdx.org/view/Legal_Team/or-later-vs-unclear-disambiguation#Alternative_Solution_-_create_-only_and_PROXY_.7BTEXT.7D_operators_for_licenses_that_explicitly_declare_their_compatibility
[4]: https://lists.spdx.org/pipermail/spdx/2011-May/000395.html
Subject: license name question
Date: Wed May 25 10:35:40 MDT 2011
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