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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