Nuking "or later" in the sources

[Rob Landley]

On Wednesday 20 September 2006 2:48 pm, Andy Green wrote:
> Rich Felker wrote:
> 
> > When you receive a modified version of your code from Busybox, it is a
> > derived work with multiple copyright holders. The party who prepared
> > and distributed this derived work is not required to license it under
> > all versions of GPL since you told them (when you licensed your
> > original work under "GPL v2 or later") that they can pick, at their
> > option, either GPL v2 or any later version. They picked v2. Thus the
> > derived work is under GPL v2 only.
> 
> I think it's a good move if busybox goes GPL 2 only, but understanding 
> the explanation above, is it then the plan to remove the "or later" 
> language from the individual source files at the time of the license 
> change?

The last version under the old license was svn 16112.  The next change (16113) 
was Bernhard Fischer unilaterally and retroactively adding "or later" back 
onto applets that said GPL v2 only (and in many cases, had other patches 
merged with them while they said GPL v2 only).  I didn't ask him to do it, 
don't agree with it, and kind of doubt it's legally supportable.  At the very 
least, it clouds the issue more.  Therefore, 16112 was the last version that 
had as clean a license history as we ever had back under GPLv2 or later.

I added a few notes to license.html on the website clarifying where we're 
going earlier today.  It mentions things like svn 16112 as a dividing point, 
and that the old versions are still under the licenses they were released 
under, but also gives examples of where those licenses conflicted in ways 
that the current one doesn't.

As for the individual source files, I change them as I touch them and I'm 
going to go through and change the ones that specifically mention my and 
Erik's copyrights when I get around to it, and probably complete the forensic 
analysis at some point and remove anything code remaining that might be 
attributable to Bruce since I do owe him _something_ as an ex-maintainer, and 
I've decided that what I owe him is the removal of his old code so it's not 
used under a license he doesn't agree with, I.E. the GPL.

As for everything else, I'll worry about that when I get around to it...

> It seems to me if this is not done, the recipient can with some  
> justification point at the files you gave him (that continue to say GPL 
> 2 "or later"), say that he wants to modify under GPL 3 and demand 
> signing keys accordingly.

It'll all be switched over before the next release, which isn't until 
December.  The license for the project as a whole changed, and earlier today 
I modified various files like libbb/xfuncs.c and applets/busybox.c that you 
can't build BusyBox without (and yes the changes were for a reason, and no I 
haven't checked those in yet; only half my time at work is spent on BusyBox 
and today was a day with lots of non-busybox stuff).

As for files that are still haven't changed since svn 16112, what does it 
matter?  The old version is still under the old license, that file's 
identical to the old version, there's already somewhere they can get it under 
if they want to cherry-pick that file.  They can't actually build a busybox 
binary from current sources under that license.

> Further, is it not the case that anyone who has any GPL2 "or later" 
> project plans to "distribute under the terms of GPL 2" should make sure 
> he does the same thing?  Not talking about removing copyright notices 
> just making sure that each file contains the actual terms of that 
> distribution action (which otherwise is probably not committed to 
> writing anywhere...)

I'm working on it... :)

I also plan to remove the 4-clause BSD code from the tree before the next 
release.  That's been there for _years_...

> -Andy

Rob
-- 
Never bet against the cheap plastic solution.