Update to the latest GPLv2 revision

[strzibny]

Hello,

The GPLv2 included with this gem is outdated and that causes a legal issue when packaging for Fedora. The latest official revision can be found at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt.

This pull request simply updates the license.

Thanks
Josef

[bradediger]

@sandal What's the nature of our contributor agreement, if any? Do we need permission from each contributor to relicense or can the project do it on its own?

[yob]

I'll admit to being a bit ignorant of licenses - I usually stick an MIT license file in my projects and forget about it. I didn't even know there were multiple versions of GPLv2.

@strzibny - what's the nature of the legal issue for Fedora, and what's the substance of the changes in the license?

[bradediger]

@yob The basic issue I see is that if people gave us code under a particular license (such as "this version of the GPLv2"), we can't just rerelease it under a different license without their permission. If they gave us copyright assignment, we are fine. If they gave us generic "GPLv2" wording, well then, I guess it's a gray area.

[practicingruby]

@bradediger: We never explicitly said "This exact version of the GPLv2", so I'd assume that we can change this without asking everyone. If you want to be careful, send a notice to each contributor and let them know to respond on this ticket within N days if they have concerns.

We don't have any sort of contributor agreement, because I feel strongly against copyright assignment, and it isn't even legal in some countries.

[practicingruby]

@yob @bradediger : If you look at the diff on GPLv2, it looks like it only updates some fairly trivial things: FSF renamed LGPL from "Library GPL" to "Lesser GPL" and this reflects that change, and the address for the FSF changed as well. Other than that, looks to just be whitespace adjustments.

[bradediger]

Thanks @sandal.

@yob @cheba @henrik @fnando @jonsgreen @Bluejade @piglop @casper: Thank you for your contributions to pdf-inspector. For legal reasons (see upthread), we need to bump the GPLv2 to the latest version. Are there any objections? If we don't hear significant objections within 14 days (by 17 December 2012), we will relicense. Thanks!

[yob]

fine with me

[henrik]

And with me.

On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 3:36 PM, James Healy notifications@github.comwrote:

fine with me

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//pull/8#issuecomment-10955296.

[strzibny]

Thanks guys, from my point of view this newer version doesn't change much and I don't think it even can. So its more of a cosmetic issue.

From Fedora wiki [1]:

"The license file, usually COPYING, must not be patched for legal reasons. Other files can be patched if deemed suitable. The updated GPL 2.0 license (the usual case) with correct address is at GPL-2.0.txt"

It basically says that your version looks like a patched version of the license even that's not the truth (it's just not updated).

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_Rpmlint_issues#incorrect-fsf-address

[bradediger]

Thanks @strzibny. I agree that the changes are extremely minor, but I'd rather make sure we don't have any significant objections from contributors before merging.

[sigmike]

Fine with me too.

[pointlessone]

No objections, of course.

[bradediger]

Merged. Thanks @strzibny!