> On Sat 15/Jul/2017 19:24:56 +0200 Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > > [...] > > Finally, this is probably a good moment -- since this thread has erupted on > > a Debian Mailing List -- to let everyone know that Conservancy also > > organizes a GPL copyright aggregation project for Debian contributors as > > well, see: https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/#debian and > > https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/aug/17/debian/.
Alessandro Vesely wrote: > May I ask, in passing, why Debian (for packages like apt, say) did not > switch to GPLv3? I discussed in my talk at DebConf10 about how many Debian packages are already outbound licensed under GPLv3, because Debian carries the default version of GPL as GPLv3, by symlinking /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL to GPL-3. The effect of that is that, for any package that simply says "GPL" or points to /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL , Debian is licensing it it users under GPLv3. Of course, if Debian developers haven't added changes that are GPLv3-or-later, the downstream user can always go back upstream and get a copy licensed under GPLv2-or-later (etc.). I note you asked specifically about apt, which is GPLv2-or-later. While I think contributors to apt and other GPLv2-or-later packages should consider whether GPLv3-or-later is a better license for them (I generally think GPLv3 is a very good licensing choice in most situations), I don't see any urgent reason that developers should switch to GPLv3, in part because... > Would such switch ease enforcement? ... I am not aware of any specific reasons why GPLv3 is more easily enforced than GPLv2. The challenges that our community faces regarding enforcement, which I outlined in my email yesterday, exist in roughly equal measure for both GPLv2 and GPLv3. > as well as Linux As another poster pointed out, most (although not all) of Linux's copyrights are GPLv2-only, and a change in license to GPLv2-or-later or GPLv3-or-later would require extensive effort. -- Bradley M. Kuhn Distinguished Technologist of Software Freedom Conservancy ======================================================================== Become a Conservancy Supporter today: https://sfconservancy.org/supporter