From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Leo Famulari Subject: Re: License auditing Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2016 14:03:42 -0400 Message-ID: <20160803180342.GA11621@jasmine> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:35993) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bV0WL-0008MS-Jj for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:03:58 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bV0WH-0007Lq-DQ for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:03:56 -0400 Received: from out1-smtp.messagingengine.com ([66.111.4.25]:41703) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1bV0WE-0007IO-Uj for guix-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 03 Aug 2016 14:03:53 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: David Craven Cc: guix-devel On Wed, Aug 03, 2016 at 06:28:38PM +0200, David Craven wrote: > Hi! > > How can I tell the difference between a lgpl2.1 and lgpl2.1+ license? The license headers in the source files will say if they are licensed under version 2.1 or later. Something like this: "...either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version." I've heard that if the only license information is a copy of the full license (for example, in LICENSE or COPYING) and the files have no license headers, then the "or later" part is implied, but I'm not sure. > Is this a job that an automated tool could do? Detecting licenses > included in a tarball? A tool might be able to suggest something, but I think that it will always require human inspection. And we only have to do this inspection once per package version, on behalf of everybody else that uses the distribution.