Le 05/12/2019 à 16:57, Boyuan Yang a écrit : >> There are many packages having a different license in the Debian >> distribution. >> How to resolve a conflict between licenses to specify GPLv2? >> For instance, GPLv2 & GPLv3 are incompatible. > > I never heard that GPLv2 license and GPLv3 license are incompatible.
Yet they are, if one is to trust this: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.en.html To the OP: All license compatibility issues are taken into account when packaging a software in Debian so that we (try very hard to) never include in Debian a package that has such incompatibilities. (And by try very hard, I mean that mistakes may happen, but if a serious bug if that happens). Note that it is never a problem to ship two packages which licenses are incompatible (see the discussion in the link above). An incompatibility can only be triggered when you actually "combine" the two packages, which usually means linking object code of one package with object code of the other package. In practice, avoiding that can mean not linking a package with a certain library with an incompatible license or working with upstream so that they relicense their work in a way that makes it possible to combine packages in the way we would like to. Note that many packages are actually "GPL v2 or above", which is obviously compatible with GPL v3 since the packager can choose to use these packages under GPL v3. It is not possible to combine two packages, one of which is only GPLv3, and have the result be GPLv2. You would have to convince upstream to release their software as "GPL v2 or above". I'm not sure I understand the intent of the OP. If you are disputing the procedures of Debian: we are aware of such incompatibilities, take them seriously, and work through them. If you are seeking advice on what to do: I'm not sure this is the right list to do so. In any case, you would need to be specific on which incompatible packages you want to combine together and why you think they are incompatible. But in the end you will have to either find compatible alternatives or convince upstream to relicense their software. Kind regards, Thibaut.
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