License options should include "GPLv2 or later" and "GPLv3 or later"

[James Vasile]

Lots of projects are not, strictly speaking, GPLv2 or GPLv3. They're "GPLv2 and any later version of the GPL" or "GPLv3 and any later version". It would be nice to be able to choose that as an option when reporting the license of my project.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

I'm not sure this is correct. Maybe I misunderstand the request. These proposed actions are not precise enough to indicate what governs the rules of distribution. I'm not convinced any project means it is "GPLv2 or later" because adopting a new license requires some diligence by the project to be certain it conforms.

[Brad Crittenden (bac)]

I'm not sure this request makes sense. For instance, many people are quite happy with GPLv2 but have issues with GPLv3. Who knows what GPLv4 has in store? I don't know why you'd want to give blanket endorsement of a future license that hasn't been written yet.

[James Vasile (james.vasile)]

I'm not advocating forcing all GPLv2 projects to become v2 or later. I'm proposing that projects that *are* v2 or later be able to indicate this. "v2 or later" projects are in a different licensing position from v2 projects.

Again, if you don't like "or later", don't use it. But for those of us who are already using it, we should be able to select that.

[Karl Fogel (kfogel)]

Brad, Curtis,

The GPLvFOO offers the option of licensing under version FOO "or any later version as published by the Free Software Foundation". It's an option only: some projects choose to license under version FOO and leave off the "or any later version", other projects include those words.

Thus there are, in effect, four different licenses here:

   GPLv2
   GPLv2 or any later version
   GPLv3
   GPLv3 or any later version

Right now, we only offer two of those licenses. James is suggesting we offer all four.

Looking ahead: this means that any time a new GPL comes out, Launchpad would add *two* new licenses: "GPLv[new version]" and "GPLv[new version] or any later version".

[Brad Crittenden (bac)]

Karl,

Thanks for the more thorough explanation.

Right now projects can choose a license and add additional information in the 'license info' text field. You can select "GNU GPL v3" and add "or later versions" to the license info. It will then appear on a project page as:

Licenses: GNU GPL v3 (or later version)

I'm hesitant for us to propagate more licenses but I do recognize the solution I've outlined is not obvious to users. Perhaps we can work on the UI a bit to make it so.

[James Vasile (james.vasile)]

Brad Crittenden wrote:
> Karl,
>
> Thanks for the more thorough explanation.
>
> Right now projects can choose a license and add additional information
> in the 'license info' text field. You can select "GNU GPL v3" and add
> "or later versions" to the license info. It will then appear on a
> project page as:
>
> Licenses: GNU GPL v3 (or later version)
>
> I'm hesitant for us to propagate more licenses but I do recognize the
> solution I've outlined is not obvious to users. Perhaps we can work on
> the UI a bit to make it so.
>

The problem with saying that users can just annotate the "or later" bit
is that, having done this, my project now says "This project's license
has not been reviewed" at the top of its main page. It's one thing to
offer flexibility. It's another to cast my perfectly commonplace choice
of GPlv3 or later as somehow suspect. The very first thing a user sees
when coming to my page is this line, even before seeing the description
of the project.

[Brad Crittenden (bac)]

James you actually got that message because you chose "Other/Open Source" in addition to the GPL license. The conspicuousness of that message is by design. We want contributors to be aware if a project has *potential* licensing issues before they contribute to the project.

Your point is well taken, though. Thanks for your follow up on this issue.

[James Vasile (james.vasile)]

Yes, I see that the warning isn't specifically because I chose "or
later". And I appreciate that fewer license options can lead to a less
confusing interface.

LP is caught between having umpteen different GPL options and having an
awful lot of projects not fit into the presented boxes (I'm guessing
there's more v2 or later than, say, MPL projects).

Perhaps what's needed is a different mechanism than checkboxes. Maybe
you could use checkboxes for your 5 most popular licenses and a
drop-down for the larger list.

Or, maybe the first step is actually to recognize that GPL isn't alone
in having licenses with significantly differing versions. PHP license
versions matter. Apache license versions matter. Perhaps if the user
checks licenses that are versioned, javascript could be used to present
the various version flavors for checkboxing.

[Brad Crittenden (bac)]

This licensing change request will be bundled with several others and handled at a later date.