Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] s390x: Fix the confusing contributions-after-2012 license statements

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

On 2019-02-06 13:58, Cornelia Huck wrote:
> On Wed,  6 Feb 2019 13:41:33 +0100
> Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
>> The license information in these files is rather confusing. The text
>> declares LGPL first, but then says that contributions after 2012 are
>> licensed under the GPL instead. How should the average user who just
>> downloaded the release tarball know which part is now GPL and which
>> is LGPL?
> 
> FWIW, that statement was added in ccb084d3f0ec ("s390: new
> contributions GPLv2 or later").
> 
>>
>> Looking at the text of the LGPL (see COPYING.LIB in the top directory),
>> the license clearly states how this should be done instead:
>>
>> "3. You may opt to apply the terms of the ordinary GNU General Public
>>  License instead of this License to a given copy of the Library. To do
>>  this, you must alter all the notices that refer to this License, so
>>  that they refer to the ordinary GNU General Public License, version 2,
>>  instead of to this License."
> 
> Hm. This talks about GPL v2, not GPL v2-or-later...

IANAL, but since all the files originally were licensed under
LGPLv2-or-later, that should not be an issue, as far as I can see: You
then could also upgrade the LGPLv2-or-later code to LGPLv3-or-later,
which in turn allows you to license under GPLv3. So LGPLv2-or-later
means you can put the code also under GPLv2-or-later. Or do I miss
something?

 Thomas