libsoup license

libsoup license

[Sander Visser]

Hi

Does anyone know why the license is marked LGPL2 and not LGPL2+ in libsoup-2.4_2.50.0.bb? It seems "or (at your option) any later version" is allowed via for example libsoup/soup-requester.h.

Nowhere could I see that the "or (at your option) any later version" is missing.

/Regards Sander

Re: libsoup license

[Burton, Ross]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 709 bytes --]

Hi all,

[CC'ing Dan Winship, the libsoup maintainer]

On 11 September 2015 at 11:32, Sander Visser <sander@visser.se> wrote:

> Does anyone know why the license is marked LGPL2 and not LGPL2+ in
> libsoup-2.4_2.50.0.bb? It seems "or (at your option) any later version"
> is allowed via for example libsoup/soup-requester.h.
>
> Nowhere could I see that the "or (at your option) any later version" is
> missing.
>

To be honest libsoup isn't very clear - the COPYING is the standard LGPL
boilerplate, the README just says "LGPL", and very few source files specify
the license at all.

Dan: exactly what license is libsoup under?  LGPL v2 precisely, or LGPL v2
or greater?

Thanks,
Ross

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1400 bytes --]

Re: libsoup license

[Dan Winship]

On 09/18/2015 04:07 PM, Burton, Ross wrote:
> To be honest libsoup isn't very clear
...
> Dan: exactly what license is libsoup under?  LGPL v2 precisely, or LGPL
> v2 or greater?

I don't know either. :-)

It was initially written at a time when Ximian was explicitly using the 
"v2 only" license on evolution (because reasons), so it's possible that 
libsoup was intended to be v2 only, since it was more-or-less part of 
evolution. But then, Novell relicensed evolution to v2+ later on, so 
presumably, if libsoup actually was v2-only at that point (which it may 
not have been), then surely Novell *intended* to also make libsoup v2+, 
despite not having said so. So... "maybe it used to be v2+" + "probably 
it was intended to have been changed to v2+ later if it wasn't already" 
+ "certainly everything written since 2007 was intended to be v2+" == 
"probably definitely it's v2+ now" ? That's totally how the law works, 
right?

-- Dan

Re: libsoup license

[Burton, Ross]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1062 bytes --]

On 18 September 2015 at 21:43, Dan Winship <danw@gnome.org> wrote:

> It was initially written at a time when Ximian was explicitly using the
> "v2 only" license on evolution (because reasons), so it's possible that
> libsoup was intended to be v2 only, since it was more-or-less part of
> evolution. But then, Novell relicensed evolution to v2+ later on, so
> presumably, if libsoup actually was v2-only at that point (which it may not
> have been), then surely Novell *intended* to also make libsoup v2+, despite
> not having said so. So... "maybe it used to be v2+" + "probably it was
> intended to have been changed to v2+ later if it wasn't already" +
> "certainly everything written since 2007 was intended to be v2+" ==
> "probably definitely it's v2+ now" ? That's totally how the law works,
> right?
>

Thanks for the reply Dan, and yes that's totally how the law works.  Maybe
you should clarify this somewhere, or do you prefer the ambiguity?

Sander, a patch to make libsoup LGPLv2+ would be accepted by me on this
basis.

Ross

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1504 bytes --]