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On Wed, Nov 28, 2007 at 11:02:25PM +0000, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: |
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> On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 23:54:57 +0100 |
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> Thilo Bangert <bangert@g.o> wrote: |
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> > there is also the legal argument. it's better to state explicitly |
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> > which versions apply and not have to cleanup the mess, when somebody |
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> > decides to release GPL-2.5. |
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> That's an argument strongly in favour of ranged specs. A huge number of |
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> packages are licensed under "GPL 2 or later", and currently most ebuilds |
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> incorrectly use LICENSE="GPL-2" for these. Even changing these to |
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> LICENSE="|| ( GPL-2 GPL-3 )" just shifts the problem around a bit. With |
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> CRAN "GPL 2 or later" translates to "GPL (>= 2)", which is a much more |
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> accurate description of a package's license. |
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Going beyond the GPL, there are a number of other license statements |
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that use an 'or later' clause, but there is only one version of the |
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license present so far. Doing the _or_later suffix hack is a bit nasty, |
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because then you expect to find that as a file in licenses/, or need to |
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have special handling for it. |
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|
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I'm for ranged licenses, but I think attention needs to be paid to the |
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syntax. The postfix [] form does nicely separate the version information |
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from the actual license name (moreso than the traditional CPV atom), but |
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the LGPL[>=2&<3] example looks to be overloading it, when we already |
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have AND/OR at the higher level. |
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LICENSE="|| ( Eclipse ( LGPL[>=2] LGPL[<3] ) )" |
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Which is, Eclipse OR (LGPL v2 up to, but not including LGPLv3). |
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-- |
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Robin Hugh Johnson |
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Gentoo Linux Developer & Infra Guy |
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E-Mail : robbat2@g.o |
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GnuPG FP : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85 |
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