On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 01:31:59PM -0700, W. Trevor King wrote: > On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 03:15:44PM -0400, Wheeler, David A wrote: > > * GPL-2.0+. I *know* that GPL version 2.0, or later, is acceptable. > > How could you know this before GPL-4.0 has been written? Maybe I'm > just not clear on what your “acceptable” means. > > > * GPL-2.0. I *know* that at least GPL version 2.0 is acceptable > > (e.g., I found its license text). However, I'm not entirely > > certain whether or not later versions are acceptable, so I make > > *no* assertion either way. > > If you've audited both GPL-2.0 and GPL-3.0 for your package and want > the "or later" language to include GPL-4.0, etc. when they get > written, you could say [1]: > > GPL-2.0+ OR GPL-3.0+ > > but whether you've read the license or deem it “acceptable” seems > orthogonal to whether you're granting the “or any later version” > choice defined in the GPL (§14 as of GPL 3.0 [2]).
Digging at this “acceptable” idea a bit more, I'm guessing it's something like “adapters may share adapted works under”. But the SPDX isn't just about copyleft (e.g. it includes CC-BY-ND-*). I think it makes more sense to focus on licenses (just the text, e.g. GPL-2.0) and license grants. For example, here are some SPDX License Expressions translated into grants: * GPL-2.0: You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation. * GPL-2.0+: You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. * CC-BY-SA-4.0: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You can distribute an adaptation under a later version of the CC BY-SA because that's part of the CC-BY-SA-4.0 [1]. * CC-BY-SA-4.0+: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License; either version 4.0 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. The CC-BY-SA-4.0 tries to grant you that right anyway, but regardless of how you read the CC-BY-SA-4.0, I'm granting you that right directly. > CC-BY-SA-3.0+ would be a synonym for CC-BY-SA-3.0 [6], but I don't > see a problem with that. It would probably be useful to call that > out in the wording that forbids the -only suffix for CC-BY-SA-3.0… If the SPDX doesn't want to get into the business of determining when licenses grant + semantics, then we probably don't want an -only suffix and we certainly don't want a GPL-2.0-only short identifier. But if you want to be in the business of warning users about the lack of built-in or-later wording in the GPL, CC-BY-ND-4.0, etc. and the presence of built-in or-later in the CC-BY-SA-4.0, etc., I don't see how you'd avoid making claims about whether the license had built-in or-later wording. Cheers, Trevor [1]: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/compatible-licenses/ -- This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org). For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
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