[Fedora-legal-list] Re: Confusion between GPL-3.0 and GPL-3.0+
Il 11/12/2015 14:57, Richard Fontana ha scritto:
On Fri, Dec 11, 2015 at 06:47:47AM +0100, Mattia Verga wrote:
> But what about if the package carries a
> Copyright.txt file which says "license: GPL-3"? Does it wins over source
> headers?
It really depends on the circumstances, but if all the source file
notices say "GPLv3 or later" I would probably assume that the entire
program is GPLv3-or-later even if this is not explicit in the global
copyright file.
> I'm asking because I'm in this situation while packaging
"Indistarter" in
> Fedora. I'm now waiting for a clarification about the software author, but I
> would like to know what to say him for fixing this situation. Does he have
> to change source headers if he want to ship as GPLv3 only? There's no such
> case on gnu.org as it seems that the only option complied is GPLv3+.
I took a look myself (if this is the 'indistarter' project hosted on
SourceForge) and I would conclude it's GPLv3-or-later since the source
files bearing the project maintainer's copyright and license notices
all use "or later" (bare 'GPLv3' only appears in files with license
metadata), and there's nothing I could see that suggested there was
'GPLv3 only' code.
Richard
I did a check also with folks at gnu.org and they confirmed your
opinion. Here it is their response:
Thank you for your question. If the headers state that the source is
under GPLv3+, then that controls. The license file for all projects will
just be the plain GPLv3; the copyright holder indicates whether the work
is GPLv3-only or GPLv3+ in the license headers.
I will ask Indistarter developer to set all files to GPLv3+ to avoid
future confusion.
Thanks for the help.