>> ALTERNATIVELY, this product may be distributed under the terms of the >> GNU General Public License, in which case the provisions of the GNU >> GPL are required INSTEAD OF the above restrictions. (This clause is >> necessary due to a potential conflict between the GNU GPL and the >> restrictions contained in a BSD-style copyright.) ... >The only version of the GPL that was current at the time Linux-PAM became >available was GPLv2, so this is the only reasonable reading of this license. >I could try to clarify with upstream whether they would like PAM to be >available under GPLv3, but this code has had a fair number of contributors >over its 10+-year history, so getting the code fully relicensed would take a >fair amount of effort.
I have realized something related to your claim: All versions of the GPL (GPL v1, v2 and v3) contains this text: If the Program does not specify a version number of the GNU General Public License, you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation. Thus, assuming the original license is correct to refer to the FSF's GNU GPL (and I would find it difficult to argue with that claim) then according to that license, you can use Linux-PAM under any version of the GPL. There is no need to contact each copyright holder to ask for a re-licensing to GPLv3, if anyone would want that. This seems to be one nice consequence of _not_ specifying the GPL version in your license. A subtle point here is that IF the debian package refers to a particular version of the GPL (i.e., version 3 like it does today) then the package would not be compatible with GPL version 2. To preserve license compatibility between GPLv2 and GPLv3, the debian copyright file must be equally agnostic about the GPL version. If debian claims that Linux-PAM is distributed under GPLv2, which Debian legally appears able to do, it would be license incompatible with GPLv3. If we can't reach a more clear license from upstream (and suspect that may be difficult), I think this observation should go into Debian's copyright file. Of course, it would be good to have more people think about this issue. I may be reading the license badly or inferring the wrong things. You also need to be careful when referencing to particular files under /usr/share/common-licenses/, to avoid inferring that the debian package is available only under a particular GPL version. Thanks, Simon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
