Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity [LWN.net]

Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

Posted Jan 18, 2012 19:52 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity by jrn
Parent article: Google's disappearing Android GPL compliance opportunity

if they are changing the license they should change the release number, publishing a new tarball for the same version number under a different license means that you have no way of knowing if the people who compiled that version got it under GPLv2 or GPLv3

so someone who is complying with GPLv2 could be sued by someone for their non-complience with GPLv3 because that's what the files now claim.

this is careless at best, and leads to people not trusting the software because they don't know what license the version they already downloaded is under now.

to post comments

Please don't spread FUD...

Posted Jan 18, 2012 20:59 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (6 responses)

<blockquote>so someone who is complying with GPLv2 could be sued by someone for their non-complience with GPLv3 because that's what the files now claim.</blockquote>

This is not what happened and you [hopefully] know that.

You can pick old tarball and try to change it. “Try” is important becuase you'll find out that you can not do that: all files with changed license have always included line THIS FILE IS MACHINE GENERATED WITH CGEN and what does GPLv2 and/or GPLv3 say about such files? Right: you can not modify them - you should only modify original files. Original files were not included in old version of binutils thus these files were unmodifyable. In fact they were unusable because FSF distributed them under GPL so you needed to offer source - and you had no source to offer!

FSF did two things: 
1. It forgiven past inadvertent violations (people who only use tarballs and not try to change it are 100% clear). 
2. It provided source files for all these autogenerated files - but under GPLv3.

Do I like this solution? No: this is stupid to try to inject GPLv3 in old packages released under GPLv2. Does it make practical difference? No: now you hack the exact version released long ago - but only on GPLv3 terms, not on GPLv2 terms while before you had no right to modify them at all.

Files which were not mistakenly released without source five years ago are still distributed under GPLv2 in new tarball.

P.S. Note that new tarball is called binutils-2.17a.tar.bz2 while old tarball is called binutils-2.17.tar.bz2. After old tarballs disappeared there was huge outcry from people who found out that their scripts stopped working - so eventually FSF added sysmlinks from old filenames to new filesnames to help these people. Pehaps this was a problem you are so angry about?

Please don't spread FUD...

Posted Jan 18, 2012 21:54 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (5 responses)

>> so someone who is complying with GPLv2 could be sued by someone for their non-complience with GPLv3 because that's what the files now claim.

> This is not what happened and you [hopefully] know that

I did not say that someone has sued, I'm saying that someone could sue, and point to the file as distributed by the FSF as proof that it's released under the GPLv3.

and if they don't intend to be able to do this, why change the license?

the fact that someone could then point out that this version (2.17) was released before the GPLv3 was released, and therefor claiming that it's use must comply with GPLv3 could be considered fraud just further weakens the FSF.

having two files that claim to be the same version, with (as I understand it) the only difference between them being the license is just a bad idea. you don't want people to be able to start arguing "when I downloaded the file it said X and then you changed it to say Y"

it doesn't matter if they replaced the file or just changed it from being a file to being a symlink. people downloading things can't tell the difference. they download the file claiming to be 2.17 and it's now different.

Please don't spread FUD...

Posted Jan 18, 2012 21:59 UTC (Wed) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link] (4 responses)

> I did not say that someone has sued, I'm saying that someone could sue, and point to the file as distributed by the FSF as proof that it's released under the GPLv3.

> and if they don't intend to be able to do this, why change the license?

See <http://lwn.net/Articles/475946/>.

I'll admit I'm a bit disappointed to read that you apparently are claiming that the binutils maintainers did this with the intention of lying.

Please don't spread FUD...

Posted Jan 23, 2012 0:35 UTC (Mon) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link] (3 responses)

The binutils maintainers insisted that Red Hat sign over the copyrights to them (which they've always done as a condition of contributing code to GNU proejcts), and then the FSF took those contributed files and released them under GPLv3, not under GPLv2.

That was a choice the binutils guys made, not Red Hat. The FSF could have released those files under GPLv2. They chose not to do so. They chose to retroactively relicense the old tarball, and to make the new tarball under a different license available from the old link, and wait for people like me to go "why did my checksum fail and fall back to a mirror" in order to even notice it had happened.

Whether they were being incompetent, or being sneaky, is a separate issue. They did what they did, by choice.

How is that "spreading FUD"?

Rob

the term "retroactive relicensing"

Posted Jan 23, 2012 1:25 UTC (Mon) by jrn (subscriber, #64214) [Link] (1 responses)

Who said you were spreading FUD? khim's corrections were in response to a comment by dlang.

However, your characterization _still_ strikes me as strange. Usually when I see the words "retroactively relicense the old tarball", I would assume that that means there was old code under one license and they have revoked the license, replacing it with a new one. You can be unhappy with the license chosen for binutils 2.17a and the choice to put that symlink there (and I would agree with you) but calling it fraud as dlang did or retroactive relicensing as you are seems disingenuous.

Please take a note of the following...

Posted Jan 23, 2012 2:11 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

You can be unhappy with the license chosen for binutils 2.17a and the choice to put that symlink there (and I would agree with you)

As I've already explained: initially file was just removed, symlink was added later to [hopefully] help users with automatic scripts. I'm not sure it was good idea - but it was quite explicitly not produced by RMS, FSF or "binutils guys"...

As I've said already: stop spreading FUD. I may not agree with everything FSF does (and the fact that they released these files under GPLv3 looks strange to me, too), but I at least tend to check facts before trying to tell tales about FSF conspiracies.

Good try...

Posted Jan 23, 2012 1:56 UTC (Mon) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

They chose to retroactively relicense the old tarball, and to make the new tarball under a different license available from the old link, and wait for people like me to go "why did my checksum fail and fall back to a mirror" in order to even notice it had happened.

Whether they were being incompetent, or being sneaky, is a separate issue. They did what they did, by choice.

How is that "spreading FUD"?

Well, apparently you don't know what FUD is. Definition: FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information - and this is what you are doing here.

FSF never relicensed old tarball: new tarball was put under different name. Then people started complaining that old tarballs disappeared and offered a solution: This kind of URL change is a serial killer for automatic build system/script already shipped. Is it possible to have simlinks like 'oldername'->'newname' (as for example binutils-2.21.1a.tar.bz2 tarball will actually contain binutils-2.21.1)? and binutils maintaines agreed to make few symlinks.