Re: Missing copyright clause of debian directory

Xiyue Deng <[email protected]> Sun, 14 Apr 2024 01:14:24 -0700
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> writes:

> "that’s the beauty of using GPLv2+ instead of GPLv2: it can be converted to later versions 
> *WITHOUT* any additional permission from the copyright holders”
>
> That was an egregious enough typo that I felt compelled to send another email.  I 
> apologize for the noise.

Thanks very much Soren for the detailed explanations!  And your
suggestions match what Richard suggested as well!

I think in this case I'll keep the debian/* under GPL-2+ for now, as in
our team we are not recommended to be added to copyright holders with
incremental improvements until we have done a more substantial
contribution.  But I'll keep in mind the possibility to upgrade GPL-2+
to GPL-3+ given their compatibility.

Thanks again to you and Richard both!

>
> On Friday, April 12, 2024 12:48:20 PM MST Soren Stoutner wrote:
>> As an additional followup, as the original debian/* files were licensed
>> GPLv2+, if you edit a file you can choose to make your contribution GPLv3+,
>> which would convert the entire file to GPLv3+.  If you end up editing all of
>> the files in debian/* at least once, you could convert the entire copyright
>> entry to GPLv3+.
>> 
>> I can’t do that with Electrum because there is no automatic conversion from
>> GPLv3+ to Expat.  But it is an option that is open to you if you would like to
>> pursue it.  It also isn’t a problem if you decide to leave all your
>> contributions to debian/* as GPLv2+, as any GPLv2+ file can be contributed to
>> an upstream GPLv3+ project (that’s the beauty of using GPLv2+ instead of
>> GPLv2: it can be converted to later versions with any additional permission
>> from the copyright holders).
>> 
>> On Friday, April 12, 2024 12:40:55 PM MST Soren Stoutner wrote:
>> > As an additional comment, I currently maintain Electrum.  Upstream is
>> 
>> licensed
>> 
>> > Expat. Previous maintainers licensed their debian/* contributions GPLv3+.
>> > When I took over the package, I started working closely with upstream and
>> > wanted to contribute patches and other files, like AppSream metainfo to
>> > them.
>> > 
>> > To do this, I wanted all of my new contributions to debian/* to be licensed
>> > under Expat when I was the sole author of the file, and dual licensed under
>> > GPLv3+ and Expat when I was editing an existing file.  I indicated that in
>> > the following way:
>> > 
>> > Files:     debian/*
>> > Copyright: 2013-2015 Vasudev Kamath <[email protected]>
>> > 
>> >            2013 Gregor Herrmann <[email protected]>
>> >            2013-2021 Tristan Seligmann <[email protected]>
>> >            2019-2020 Laurent Bigonville <[email protected]>
>> >            2022 Bastian Germann <[email protected]>
>> >            2022-2024 Soren Stoutner <[email protected]>
>> > 
>> > License:   GPL-3+
>> > 
>> > Comment:
>> >  The following copyright holders additionally license their
>> >  contributions to debian/* under the Expat license so that
>> >  if all other listed contributors agree it can be relicensed
>> >  under Expat, which is the license used by upstream and makes it
>> >  easier for contributions to be upstreamed when appropriate:
>> >  Soren Stoutner, Bastian Germann.
>> > 
>> > Files:     debian/electrum.1
>> > Copyright: 2023-2024 Soren Stoutner <[email protected]>
>> > License:   Expat
>> > 

-- 
Xiyue Deng
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