Does anyone have opinions on the licensing of Exim?
The project front-page (
https://exim.org/index.html )
says "under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence",
and links to the GPL page (which primarily promotes GPLv3,
though older versions are present deeper in that site).
The earliest version of that text I can locate is from May 2000
( exim-website git; 4bec300304 ), which predates GPLv3 (2007).
GPLv2 was 1991.
The file "LICENCE" in the exim git "/src" directory, which ends
up in the top directory of the extracted tarball of a distribution,
is GPLv2.
Now, along comes SPDX: a standard for labelling files with
the license that applies. Yup, we're late as usual...
a) Do we care? Should we label every text file in sight?
Or not take any action?
b) Do existing licence conditions mentioned in specific file matter?
For example: a few files are commented (my precis) "GPLv2 or later",
some with "open source, do what you want".
We could
- not label such files
- try to use a label matching the existing text
- label with the project choice of licence
c) What license should we label with?
- Given the dates above, I'm tempted to say that GPLv2-only
should be taken as the original intent. But I don't know
how much freedom we have for change, nor what (if any)
might be preferred.
d) What are the legal implications of doing this labelling?
Specifically, when different files are differently (not)labelled?
--
Cheers,
Jeremy
