Re: [OE-core] [PATCH 06/17] man-db: update 2.10.2 -> 2.11.1

[Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Tue, 2022-11-22 at 21:53 +0100, Alexander Kanavin wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Nov 2022 at 13:31, Richard Purdie
> <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > From a quick look at the changes, I'm not sure this is correct. At
> > least some pieces of the codebase are still under GPL-2.0* so at the
> > very least that should still be here even if the output result is 3.0.
> > It may be some of our output packages are also still under the 2.0
> > licenses.
> 
> README has this to say:
> In addition, man-db incorporates Gnulib, copyrighted by the Free Software
> Foundation and others. Note that much of Gnulib is distributed under the GNU
> General Public License version 3 or later. This means that, although
> man-db's own source code is licensed under GPL v2 or later, the work as a
> whole falls under the terms of the GPL v3 or later. Unless you take special
> pains to remove the GPL v3 portions, you must therefore follow the terms and
> conditions of the GPL v3 or later when distributing man-db.
> 
> I took a look at the log.do_compile. Gnulib is statically linked into
> libman.so, then every executable binary is dynamically linked with
> that. So there does not seem to be any reasonable independent target
> piece that is under gplv2.
> 
> We can list the license as "gpl2+ & gpl3" with extra clarifications I guess.

Yes. We don't interpret the overall license, we list the licenses
present and then it is for others to decide the license they use it
under (even if it is fairly clear for this combination).

If it is all under that license that is fair enough, I just wondered
about any sub components.

Cheers,

Richard