fetion

[David Woolley]

John Bailey wrote:
> On 10/08/2010 05:26 PM, David Woolley wrote:
> 
> For the record, Pidgin is GPLv2 or later, not GPLv3.  Thus any derivative works
> need only comply with the terms of GPLv2.  There is no requirement within the

True.  (I used V3 because it was easier to find a translation.)

> GPLv2 that states that the COPYING file must exist; so long as the source
> distributed is clearly labeled as being licensed as GPLv2, the source itself can

Not true.  Paragraph 1 says: "and give any other recipients of the 
Program a copy of this General Public License along with the Program". 
It doesn't require that it be called Copying.

> be considered compliant with the terms of the license.  In this particular case,
> it would be best to contact the authors of the plugin in question and get them
> to properly label their source with the correct license.

In this particular case, part of the problem would seem to be how do you 
get in touch with the author!  None of the new source files have any 
copyright notice at all, and the collaborative development site with the 
newer code only has a nickname for the uploader, who may or may not be 
the primary author.  I couldn't find any means to actually contact the 
uploader, although I was really looking for a support contact.

As it is a collaborative site, I suspect one could upload the GPL text, 
but one couldn't add GPL notices to the files, because one couldn't 
specify the copyright owner and couldn't be sure that they were actually 
GPL licensed.

The version he was actually using is on many download sites, but with no 
good provenance at all.

Given the market for this plugin, its users probably don't care about 
the copyright status.

-- 
David Woolley
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