[dm-devel] [PATCH] multipath-tools: replace FSF address with a www pointer

[Xose Vazquez Perez]

On 03/19/2018 10:37 PM, Martin Wilck wrote:

> On Sat, 2018-03-10 at 21:50 +0100, Xose Vazquez Perez wrote:
>> Less prone to future modifications, and new FSF licences
>> point exactly to this url: <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
>>
>> First clean up was done in 5619a39c433ac3d10a88079593cec1aa6472cbeb
>>
>> Cc: Martin Wilck <mwilck at suse.com>
>> Cc: Christophe Varoqui <christophe.varoqui at opensvc.com>
>> Cc: device-mapper development <dm-devel at redhat.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Xose Vazquez Perez <xose.vazquez at gmail.com>

> IANAL, but AFAICS multipath-tools comes under GPLv2, and the GPLv2


https://git.opensvc.com/gitweb.cgi?p=multipath-tools/.git;a=blob_plain;f=COPYING;hb=HEAD

                  GNU *LIBRARY* GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                        Version 2, June 1991

aka "Lesser", but rules are the same as in GPL.

> still contains the original paragraph with the address. 
> https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html#howto


from https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html :
"[...]
    Foobar 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 3 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    Foobar is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with Foobar.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

To use a different set of GPL versions, you would modify the end of the first
long paragraph. For instance, to license under version 2 or later, you would
replace “3” with “2”.
[...]"

Anyway, that text is a "licence notice" and is not "part of the licence":

> Replacing this by the text from GPLv3, and using the "/licenses/" link,
> which points to a page mostly devoted to GPLv3, might cause people to
> think we're using GPLv3. I'm in favor of keeping the GPLv2 wording.


https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ is a _generic_ place. There is info about
ALL licences and versions.


It would be nice to start using SPDX tags ( https://spdx.org/ ),
at least for new files, instead of full GPL/LGPL notices:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Rrin0LlobTFYYciQ2


BTW: LFC191 Compliance Basics for Developers course is FREE
     https://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux-courses/open-source-compliance-courses/compliance-basics-for-developers