Vincent Launchbury posted on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:15:10 -0500 as excerpted: > Also, I was wondering about LGPL-2 and GPL-1, surely they're > GPL-compatible? The suggested license header in > /usr/portage/licenses/GPL-1 contains "either version 1, or (at your > option) any later version." The LGPL-2 suggests 2 or later also. It's > strange that the FSF doesn't mention them.
The FSF "or later version" clauses are generally optional, and GPL-1 is not considered free software, AFAIK. Couple that with the fact that Gentoo's license settings don't distinguish between the licenses with the "or later version" clause and those without, and GPLv1 licensed packages, regardless of whether they have the "or later version" clause or not, cannot be added to the FSF-approved list, because some may NOT have that clause, and Gentoo doesn't make the distinction. Periodically there's talk of adding "+" versions of at least the FSF licenses, but while it would probably be quite a good thing, it'd be a LOT of VERY boring work poring thru all those packages and either updating to the + version, or leaving comments in each one saying they'd been checked already. When people realize the work involved, talk quickly dies, as there are always other more pressing projects to work on, bugs to fix, etc. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
