Re: Mix of GPL 2.0 and GPL. 3.0 licenses

[Eric Blake]

On 04/04/2013 06:58 AM, Philipp Thomas wrote:
> I'm trying to package git-merge-changelog as a stand alone tool for openSUSE
> but the tool itself is GPL 2.0 or later while some parts of gnulib are GPL
> 3.0 or later and so our legal folks are blocking its checkin.
> 
> My problem is determining whether git-merge-changelog will in all possible
> cases only use gnulib components licensed under 2.0+. Is this possible at
> all?

Sorry, but checking the modules used by git-merge-changelog:

$ ./gnulib-tool --extract-license git-merge-changelog $(./gnulib-tool
--extract-dependencies git-merge-changelog)
GPL
LGPLv2+
LGPLv2+
LGPLv2+
GPL
LGPL
LGPLv2+
GPL
GPL
GPL
GPL
GPL
GPL
GPL
GPL
LGPLv2+
LGPL
GPL
LGPLv2+
LGPLv2+

shows a large dependency on GPLv3+ (the gnulib documentation mentions
that "GPL" as a license means the current GPL version or later, in this
case GPLv3+).

Gnulib intentionally avoids GPLv2+ except in the case of LGPL compatible
code (that is, only modules labeled LGPLv2+ or LGPL [LGPLv3+] can be
used in GPLv2 code).  We are unlikely to relicense git-merge-changelog
to a more permissive license, because we feel that there is value in
enforcing GPLv3+ if something is worth protecting under the GPL at all.

In particular, one of the dependencies of git-merge-changelog is xalloc,
which will never be licensed as LGPL, because it is inappropriate for a
library to call exit(); and rewriting git-merge-changelog to avoid the
use of xalloc just for licensing reasons is counterproductive.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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