PackageUpdater: silently changing license ?!?
Kenn Thyrsted
fedora at thyrsted.net
Tue Mar 11 12:23:40 UTC 2008
tir, 11 03 2008 kl. 19:06 +1030, skrev Tim:
> On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 08:25 +0100, Kenn Thyrsted wrote:
> > Hi Y'all
> >
> > My F8 packageUpdater offers me Updated gtk-nodoka-engine
> >
> > Details says:
> > "New upstream release containing license revision"
> >
> > Im rather surprised by this.
> > I can't find anything about what license it changes from and to.
>
>
> Fedora Update Notification
> FEDORA-2008-1092
> 2008-03-07 19:34:44
>
> Update Information:
>
> New upstream release containing license revision. New upstream
> release containing license revision.
>
> ChangeLog:
>
> * Sat Jan 26 2008 Martin Sourada <martin.sourada at seznam.cz> - 0.6.2-1
> - New upstream. Patches merged into upstream
> - Update license to GPLv2+
>
> That's what it changed to. You could look into an older package, to see
> what the license used to be, if you've got an older one handy.
>
> > Needless to say, - i was rather surprised by the fact that licenses is
> > more or less silently changed.
> >
> > - Does any of You know if this is "business as usual" in fedora ?
>
> It's a common thing for some things...
>
> Most of things we have in the distro are not really "Fedora" packages,
> so to speak. They're a thing that was created by somebody completely
> separate to Fedora, but the Fedora project has included a packing of it.
> So, it's up to *them* what license it releases as.
>
> e.g. OpenOffice.org, Apache, Evolution, etc., all come with Fedora, but
> none of them belong to Fedora.
>
> --
> (This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
> important to the thread.)
>
> Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored.
> I read messages from the public lists.
>
So...Theoretically i could install a program licensed under GNU GPL ,
and then - if i do not pay attention - end up with the very same
(updated) program installed under some proprietary license by means of
the update feature.
Or ??
Kenn
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