I've realized that most ebuilds for software under a GPL-family license have a wrong LICENSE due to how easy it is to not check and write GPL-2 or GPL-3 etc in the LICENSE. Although most developers do license -or-later, certain ones love to license -only for the strangest of reasons. The only solution to this issue I can see is to make `ebuild xx.ebuild test` throw a warning and eventually an error if either -only or -or-later (+) aren't explicitly set (this may be non-trivial to find out, but any software of uncertain license should not be distributed until certainty is achieved). These files would also need to be added to licenses; AGPL-3-only: GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 only. See AGPL-3 for the full text of this license. GPL-1-only: GNU General Public License, version 1 only. See GPL-1 for the full text of this license. GPL-2-only: GNU General Public License, version 2 only. See GPL-2 for the full text of this license. GPL-3-only: GNU General Public License, version 3 only. See GPL-3 for the full text of this license. LGPL-2-only: GNU Library General Public License, version 2 only. See LGPL-2 for the full text of this license. LGPL-2.1-only: GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 only. See LGPL-2.1 for the full text of this license. LGPL-3-only: GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3 only. See LGPL-3 for the full text of this license. Also, the Gentoo Copyright policy appears to need an update. If you got to https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/copyright-policy/index.html it lists; ... Every Gentoo project must abide by the Gentoo Social Contract and release its work under one or more of the following licenses: The GNU General Public License, version 2 or later (GPL-2+) ... But if you look at every single ebuild you see; # Copyright 1999-2022 Gentoo Authors # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 As a result, it is ambiguous if many Gentoo files are licensed under GPLv2-only or GPLv2-or-later! That needs to be updated to either; # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 or (at your option) any later version or # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 only I'm happy to go make all the necessary changes and send patches in, but I need to be linked to the relevant files where the changes are required.
I've been receiving complaints about license name churn already - but it only needs to be finally done right once and really the tooling should be designed to not care if some names are added. Alternately, maybe a prelude could be added to each non-+ license text to mitigate the ambiguity like; GNU General Public License, version 3 only. See below for the full text of this license. ---
(In reply to ganooslashlinus from comment #0) > These files would also need to be added to licenses; > [...] > > GPL-2-only: > GNU General Public License, version 2 only. > See GPL-2 for the full text of this license. > [...] There is no such thing as a "GPL-2-only" license. If an ebuild specifies LICENSE="GPL-2" then this indicates that the software is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2. So, if you find a package that says LICENSE="GPL-2" but the upstream license is really GPL-2+, then please report it as a bug. I am aware that some ebuilds are mislabelled. I've seen the following at least: - GPL-2+ but ebuild says GPL-2 - GPL-2 but ebuild says GPL-2+ - GPL-3+ but ebuild says GPL-2+ Inventing new license labels won't help fixing these mistakes. One must look into the package in either case. > Also, the Gentoo Copyright policy appears to need an update. > > If you got to > https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/copyright-policy/index.html it > lists; > ... > Every Gentoo project must abide by the Gentoo Social Contract and release > its work under one or more of the following licenses: > The GNU General Public License, version 2 or later (GPL-2+) > ... It continues with "c. A license approved as GPL compatible by the Free Software Foundation" which you've conveniently omitted. Certainly the GPL-2 qualifies? > But if you look at every single ebuild you see; > # Copyright 1999-2022 Gentoo Authors > # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2 > As a result, it is ambiguous if many Gentoo files are licensed under > GPLv2-only or GPLv2-or-later! They are licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2. Again, no ambiguity there.
