From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:40437) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RHG40-0002PC-45 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:27:13 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RHG3y-0003ul-80 for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:27:12 -0400 Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([209.132.183.28]:37851) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RHG3x-0003uZ-Vs for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:27:10 -0400 Message-ID: <4EA18138.5040506@redhat.com> Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 16:27:04 +0200 From: Paolo Bonzini MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <1319205801-17541-1-git-send-email-pbonzini@redhat.com> <4EA17D9D.5010801@codemonkey.ws> In-Reply-To: <4EA17D9D.5010801@codemonkey.ws> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] Mark future contributions to GPLv2-only files as GPLv2+ List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Anthony Liguori Cc: blauwirbel@gmail.com, qemu-devel@nongnu.org On 10/21/2011 04:11 PM, Anthony Liguori wrote: > > Otherwise I'm a bit concerned about ambiguity here. Let's say we have > to backport a fit to stable, we need to pull in this new copyright > statement. > > But then what if we later discovered we need to pull in a fix from > before 10/25. That will appear in the stable tree as a post-10/25 > commit but it carries a GPLv2 only license. You will never need to include this patch on 0.15 and earlier stable branches. It is legal to take GPLv2+ contributions and restrict them to GPLv2-only. Backporting is distributing, and a distributor can choose under which license he does so. So there should be no problem with stable backports, whoever does the backports is implicitly restricting the licensing to GPLv2-only. In fact, the text is just there to inform new contributors of the license. Perhaps just changing the wording satisfies you, like "By signing off changes to this files after 10/25 you agree that the file may be relicensed under GPLv2+ in the future"? > I think a per-file flag day is really the only sane approach to this. We need to make it clear right now that, from now on, GPLv3-incompatible changes will not be accepted. Paolo