Re: [Bug-gnulib] module maintainers

[Paul Eggert]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

> Sure, that would in 95% of the cases not be a controversial case. I'm
> talking about controversial things: major functional changes, all
> kinds of renaming, gratuitous stylistic changes, removal of comments,
> removal of Woe32 support, major functional changes, changing license
> from LGPL to GPL, etc.

Naturally I would consult with you before installing controversial
changes in gettext modules.

However, I see an item in your list that shouldn't be controversial,
unless I'm misunderstanding your point.  gnulib caters to GNU
application developers, who need GPLed code, not LGPLed code.  It is
the longstanding tradition of gnulib (and its predecessor library)
that its code is GPLed, even if it is otherwise taken verbatim from an
LGPLed source.  For example, the procedure that imports code from
glibc replaces the LGPL in the glibc copy with the GPL in the gnulib
copy.  This is for the convenience of gnulib users, who would
otherwise have to replace the license themselves, and who would
sometimes forget to do so in practice, leading to licensing glitches.

We should maintain this tradition with code imported from gettext into
gnulib.  Even though gettext itself may use the LGPL for a particular
module, the gnulib copy of the module should use the GPL.

I don't think it's come up before, but the same principle should apply
if we are talking about GPL versions.  The copyright notices in gnulib
should refer to the latest version of the GPL, even if the code is
imported from a copy referring to an earlier GPL version.