Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFC] Solving the problem of huge number of wrong LICENSES=*GPL-[23]

[Michał Górny]

On Sun, 2018-08-26 at 13:09 +0200, Paweł Hajdan, Jr. wrote:
> On 26/08/2018 12:53, Mart Raudsepp wrote:
> > The common issue here is that upstream COPYING files really do only
> > talk about one of the versions. And then you get to validate or source
> > files to be sure that they do have a "or later" clause in them. And
> > then on each bump you ideally should validate it again, etc, that no
> > sources without "or later" allowance are in there...
>
> Yup, precise tracking of license metadata can be a pain.
>
> I'm not really sure if that level of it is worth for us as a distro. For
> _importing_ other project's source code directly into one's project
> precise license compatibility matters a lot. That's not the scenario
> we're in. I see LICENSES as mostly a mechanism for end users to accept
> or reject EULAs etc, and I'm curious what are other common scenarios.
>
> Michał, could you elaborate on why not distinguishing more precisely
> between these GPL variants in LICENSES is a _problem_ ? I can certainly
> see the information is not always accurate, but it's not obvious to me
> how severe is the downside, what are the consequences in practice.
>

I'm not aware of any major implications.  However, I think that if we
provide for the distinction, the distinction should be used correctly.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny