[Pkg-ofed-devel] RFS: qperf

[Afif Elghraoui]

Hi, Brian,

على السبت 11 تشرين الثاني 2017 ‫12:09، كتب Brian Smith:
> Hi Afif,
> 
> re: watch
> Thanks for pointing this out. I realized that needed to be revised
> when I changed the upstream source and failed to attend to it.
> 

You shouldn't need to manually download tarballs anymore. With the watch
file, you can get new versions by running `uscan`, or even `gbp
import-orig --uscan` to download and import in one go.


> re: "or (at your option) any later version" clause
> I really appreciate the attention that you are giving to this and am
> trying to understand the concern. All of the language that is in
> d/copyright was pulled directly from the installed GPL-2 license,
> which is identical to COPYING.

Are you referring to the section at the end, where it says "How to Apply
These Terms to Your New Programs"? That part is actually after the "END
OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS" line (so not part of the license itself), and
is just an example of what you might want to use.

In the example from dh_make, which lives in
/usr/share/debhelper/dh_make/licenses/gpl2, it has the summary similar
to what you put in, but labels the license section as GPL-2.0+.

 The source code only states that GPL-2
> may be used and does not state the terms of GPL-2.
> 

In the text of the GPL-2, it says (Section 9):

```
If the Program specifies a version number of this License which applies
to it and "any later version", you have the option of following the
terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version
published by the Free Software Foundation. If the Program does not
specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version
ever published by the Free Software Foundation.
```
So the license itself doesn't automatically give the option to use any
later version (unless they just say "GPL" without a version specified at
all).


> Therefore, why is that "at your option" clause problematic?

At the end of the day, the GPL-2 and GPL-3 are different licenses, and
some people who like the GPL-2 don't like the changes made in the GPL-3
[1], so don't want to allow using any later version. The license headers
in the files of this package specifically mentioned GPL-2 and didn't say
"any later version", so you they are GPL2-only.

Here is an example rejection due to this problem (I know there are many
more, but my search is not picking them up for some reason):

http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-security-team/Week-of-Mon-20160801/000180.html

regards
Afif


1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#GPLv3_criticism


-- 
Afif Elghraoui | عفيف الغراوي
http://afif.ghraoui.name