On 01/18/2010 05:26 PM, Marcus Meissner wrote:

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 07:17:17AM +0200, Dave Plater wrote:

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On 01/16/2010 03:48 PM, Marcus Meissner wrote:

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On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 03:33:28PM +0200, Dave Plater wrote:

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On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 02:20:13PM +0200, Dave Plater wrote:

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Hi, I've come across my first license problem with ghostscript-8.70, it has switched to GPL v3. There are a lot of packages that depend on ghostscript, lilypond being one and apparently TeXLive sub packages. How are problems like this resolved. Having an old ghostscript version isn't good for attracting people to the distro. I'm totally in the dark about these things but as a packager I need to know about them.

As long as the program calls "gs" via system it is just use and does not impose license requirements the calling programs.

Most of those programs do it that way.

I am not aware that ghostscript exposes libraries?

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I am not aware that ghostscript exposes libraries?

Yes, it does -lgs and -lijs, package ghostscript-library

The above is added for the factory list

This post follows :-

I have a complete gs-8.70 package waiting to be submitted but what happens in a case like this? Is ghostscript doomed to packman or even worse out of linux altogether or is there a way of sorting this issue out. Fedora already has gs-8.70, maybe they overlooked the fact that the license had changed. It would take a few linux distros to make the ghostscript people change back to v2. List of affected files, I can find :- Uses gs_lib : capi4hylafax, hylafax

Those will just call the binary, so it is "use".

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Uses pstoraster : gutenprint

same.

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Uses libgs.so : foomatic-filters, libspectre1 Uses libijs.so: gutenprint

foomatic-filters is GPLv2 or later (so I think it can use GPLv3 libraries). libspectre same. gutenprint same.

I will try to find a verbal statement from our license guys next week, but to my not so trained eyes it looks fine to do.

Ciao, Marcus

I've done some research and gnu.org has a chart which states that GPLv2 only, take note they specify only so I'm not sure if the license needs to state only, is incompatible with any GPLv3 or LGPLv3 license. Libspectre is fine because it has a statement in it's README that says "GPLv2 or later" which is compatible. Foomatic-filters on the other hand doesn't state anything other than "copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc." and has a copy of GPLv2, so whether this implies later or only is something for the legal department. Looking at the chart GPLv2 only isn't 100% compatible with any other license. Foomatic-filters cannot exist without libgs so if there is a problem they need to address it. Regards Dave P

The sources of foomatic-filters have a copy of COPYING as only indication of its license. This COPYING file suggests "GPL v2 or later" and as the individual sources files do not have copyright headers this mentioning applies. The author should put COPYING headers as suggested in his .c and .h files of course.

foomatic-filters has: License: GPL v2 or later

in its RPM header. This also matches the internal license scan results.

I talked to our license guys and for "GPL v2 or later" using gs in GPL v3 mode is fine. If those in turn provide libraries, they are however GPL v3 after compilation.

So foomatic-filters is fine to use with the libgs library.

Ciao, Marcus

There's one aspect of ghostscript-8.70 that I don't quite know what to put in the License: part ghostscript-omni is built from Omni which is LGPLv2.1 or later. The gnu chart states that one is allowed to convert LGPLv2.1 or later into GPLv3 and from that I would understand that either all references to LGPLv2.1 must be removed or it's alright to simply put the licence in as GNUv3. Regards Dave P -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org