GPL version issue

[Jari-Matti Mäkelä]

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> Gregor Richards wrote:
>> This is a problem because it may be implied that you can only release
>> the DMD frontend under version 1 one of the license, in which case I'm
>> fairly sure that GDC isn't even legal :).  I'm sure the intention was
>> to release it under any version of the GPL.
> 
> GDC uses version 2 or later, as specified in the README:
>    "This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>     it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
>     the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
>     (at your option) any later version."
> 
> Maybe DMD gpl.txt could be changed use the same one, i.e. v2 ?
> The latest original is at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.txt

I guess it would be quite safe to convert v1 -> v2. There are not many
big projects left that still use GPL v1. Now that GPL v2 is over 15
years old there must have been a good reason to use GPL v1 in the first
place.

>> I think the license text should be changed to:
>>
>> // License for redistribution is by either the Artistic License
>> // in artistic.txt, or the GNU General Public License; either
>> // version 1 (included in gpl.txt) or (at your option) any later
>> // version.
> 
> GPL v2 would be nice (same as GCC), if not allowing for the new v3...
> There is some controversy over v3, for instance Linux uses v2 only ?

If Walter solely owns the copyright to the sources, it should be no
problem to license them under v2 only. It would be quite easy to convert
to GPL v3 in the future, if needs be.

-- 
Jari-Matti