Re: GPLv3

[John W. Eaton]

On 12-Oct-2007, David Bateman wrote:

| Thomas Weber wrote:
| >
| > GPLv2 and later should be fine, shouldn't it? Or are there GPL2-only
| > packages? 
| >
| > For other licenses, I don't know. But I'm not aware of any license that
| > was compatible with GPL2 and isn't with GPL3.

I assume you mean "any licenses other than GPLv2 without the 'any
later version' clause", since that was compatible with itself, but is
not compatible with GPLv3.

| The issue is no that we can't transition to a GPLv3 license. Rather the
| issue that worries me is that the GPLv3 license states
| 
| <quote>
| the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at
| your option) any later version.
| </quote>

To clarify, the GPL itself does not include the clause above, so it is
not inherent in the license itself, but rather the terms as applied to
specific programs.

| So officially at the moment you use a GPLv2 toolbox with Octave 2.9.15
| you must effectively relicense it to be GPLv3.

That depends on the specifics of the package.

If it is just .m files, then you can use any license you choose, as .m
files are not considered derivative works of Octave, so are not even
required to have GPL-compatible licenses.  However, I would certainly
encourage people to distribute code under GPL compatible licenses, and
I don't think that we should distribute any non-free software as a
package for Octave.

If the package includes code that will be linked with Octave and can
be considered a derivative work of Octave, then the license must be
GPLv3 compatible, but need not be GPLv3 or even GPL (modified BSD, MIT
X11, or any other GPLv3-compatible license are all acceptable).

jwe