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No, it'll effect everyone...No, it'll effect everyone...Posted Jan 18, 2012 19:13 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity by jrn Parent article: Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity
Well, situation is not so black-and-white. Old version of binutils included generated files which were contributed without source. Technically speaking it's violation of GPL (because files were submitted not in the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it) and apparently FSF never had a license for these files - thus it can not tranfer this license further. To rectify the situation original (not generated) files were formally contributed... under GPLv3. FSF also forgiven inadvertent GPL violations (can not find the actual press-release because of SOPA/PIPA blackout) to make life of users who used old tarballs easier. This means that you can use all the files which were properly released under GPLv2 back then - but you can not use files which were released in violation of GPLv2: only inadvertent violations were forgiven and new replacement files are only available under GPLv3... Not an ideal situation to be sure, but not the end of the world either...
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