Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Guys,

  I would like to apply a patch to change the files that are shared by
  the GCC, GDB and BINUTILS projects over to version 3 of the GNU
  General Public License.  (ie all the top level files except for
  those that have a distinct project that owns them, plus all of the
  files in the include/ directory tree).

  Are there any objections to me doing this, or any reasons for
  holding off for a while ?  In particular I was planning to change
  the text inside the toplevel COPYING file to that of the GPLv3, so
  that would mean that any file currently released under GPLv2 and
  saying "see the file COPYING" would now be out of sync.

Cheers
  Nick
  

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Mark Kettenis]

> From: Nick Clifton <nickc@redhat.com>
> Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 19:06:24 +0100
> 
> Hi Guys,
> 
>   I would like to apply a patch to change the files that are shared by
>   the GCC, GDB and BINUTILS projects over to version 3 of the GNU
>   General Public License.  (ie all the top level files except for
>   those that have a distinct project that owns them, plus all of the
>   files in the include/ directory tree).
> 
>   Are there any objections to me doing this, or any reasons for
>   holding off for a while ?  In particular I was planning to change
>   the text inside the toplevel COPYING file to that of the GPLv3, so
>   that would mean that any file currently released under GPLv2 and
>   saying "see the file COPYING" would now be out of sync.

GDB hasn't switched yet, but we have our own COPYING file in gdb/, so
I suppose there's no real problem with this.

Joel, are you planning to convert to GPLv3 before cutting the 6.7
branch?

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 08:25:13PM +0200, Mark Kettenis wrote:
> GDB hasn't switched yet, but we have our own COPYING file in gdb/, so
> I suppose there's no real problem with this.
> 
> Joel, are you planning to convert to GPLv3 before cutting the 6.7
> branch?

I would suggest before.  I believe all GNU projects are supposed to do
it by the end of the month, and the release branch would definitely
have to change.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Joel Brobecker]

> > Joel, are you planning to convert to GPLv3 before cutting the 6.7
> > branch?
> 
> I would suggest before.  I believe all GNU projects are supposed to do
> it by the end of the month, and the release branch would definitely
> have to change.

Sounds good to me. I was getting ready to cut the branch this coming
sunday. This is going to be a massive change; will we be able to make
that conversion in time, or should I start thinking about branching
later?

-- 
Joel

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Fri, Jul 06, 2007 at 12:38:17PM -0700, Joel Brobecker wrote:
> > > Joel, are you planning to convert to GPLv3 before cutting the 6.7
> > > branch?
> > 
> > I would suggest before.  I believe all GNU projects are supposed to do
> > it by the end of the month, and the release branch would definitely
> > have to change.
> 
> Sounds good to me. I was getting ready to cut the branch this coming
> sunday. This is going to be a massive change; will we be able to make
> that conversion in time, or should I start thinking about branching
> later?

Might want to ask Nick how he did it.  I'm not sure if there's any way
better than by hand.  But it shouldn't be too hard, just large...

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
CodeSourcery

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Nick Clifton]

> Joel Brobecker wrote:
>> Sounds good to me. I was getting ready to cut the branch this coming
>> sunday. This is going to be a massive change; will we be able to make
>> that conversion in time,

Sorry - the conversion was not made over the weekend.  Mark Mitchell has 
asked that the change over be held off until the discussion over what 
happens to new patches (to GPLv3 sources) that want to be backported to 
old branches (under GPLv2).

>> or should I start thinking about branching later?

If you can afford to wait then it would probably be a good thing.  (On 
the assumption that releasing under the GPLv3 is better than releasing 
under GPLv2.  At least for FSF projects anyway).

 > Daniel Jacobwitz wrote:
> Might want to ask Nick how he did it.  I'm not sure if there's any way
> better than by hand.  But it shouldn't be too hard, just large...

By hand. :-)  Directory edit mode in emacs plus several greps to make 
sure that I had not missed anything.  Tedious but not difficult.

Cheers
   Nick

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Joel Brobecker]

> Sorry - the conversion was not made over the weekend.  Mark Mitchell has 
> asked that the change over be held off until the discussion over what 
> happens to new patches (to GPLv3 sources) that want to be backported to 
> old branches (under GPLv2).
[...]
> If you can afford to wait then it would probably be a good thing.  (On 
> the assumption that releasing under the GPLv3 is better than releasing 
> under GPLv2.  At least for FSF projects anyway).

I think we can wait; I can't see anything that would require us to
release no matter what. Given the timeframe I heard that RMS gave
us to transition to GPLv3, I also think it's more important that
we wait.

This will actually give me some time to work on some details
that I originally decided to postpone for the next release.

-- 
Joel

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Fri, 6 Jul 2007, Nick Clifton wrote:

> Hi Guys,
> 
>   I would like to apply a patch to change the files that are shared by
>   the GCC, GDB and BINUTILS projects over to version 3 of the GNU
>   General Public License.  (ie all the top level files except for
>   those that have a distinct project that owns them, plus all of the
>   files in the include/ directory tree).
> 
>   Are there any objections to me doing this, or any reasons for
>   holding off for a while ?  In particular I was planning to change
>   the text inside the toplevel COPYING file to that of the GPLv3, so
>   that would mean that any file currently released under GPLv2 and
>   saying "see the file COPYING" would now be out of sync.

Changing libiberty, which is shared between projects, would have the 
effect of changing all projects using it (bearing in mind that parts of 
libiberty are under the GPL and parts under the LGPL, and both should 
probably be updated at once).

As such I suppose the copies of licences in the manuals should be updated 
when the common files are updated.  In the GCC tree this means 
gcc/doc/include/gpl.texi and libiberty/copying-lib.texi.  The former is 
*not* a direct copy of the standard FSF gpl.texi, it has local Texinfo 
changes to facilitate generating a gpl.7 manpage - and those must be 
merged in rather than discarded when gpl.texi is updated.

There are six copies of COPYING and four of COPYING.LIB in the GCC tree.  
Of these, libjava/classpath/COPYING and libjava/libltdl/COPYING.LIB appear 
to come from imported components maintained elsewhere, and therefore 
should be updated as part of updates of those components from upstream.

Fortunately --version output says "see the source for copying conditions" 
and so doesn't need to be changed.

I do hope the FSF answer the backporting question 
<http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2007-07/msg00057.html> sooner rather 
than later.  With regard to Ian's comment 
<http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2007-07/msg00065.html>, I think the 
issue is not so much backports to FSF release branches where it would be 
the FSF releasing under the licence of the old branch, as backports to the 
many different branches used by everyone distributing their own packaged 
stable versions of GPL free software.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[DJ Delorie]

> Changing libiberty, which is shared between projects, would have the 
> effect of changing all projects using it (bearing in mind that parts of 
> libiberty are under the GPL and parts under the LGPL, and both should 
> probably be updated at once).

Yeah, libiberty will have to be one of the last ones migrated.
Fortunately, all its files include the "or later" clause, so an
unmigrated libiberty can be used with a migrated gcc/gdb/etc.

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul  6, 2007, DJ Delorie <dj@redhat.com> wrote:

>> Changing libiberty, which is shared between projects, would have the 
>> effect of changing all projects using it (bearing in mind that parts of 
>> libiberty are under the GPL and parts under the LGPL, and both should 
>> probably be updated at once).

> Yeah, libiberty will have to be one of the last ones migrated.
> Fortunately, all its files include the "or later" clause, so an
> unmigrated libiberty can be used with a migrated gcc/gdb/etc.

Actually, since everything else has an "or later" clause, migrating
libiberty would amount to migrating everything else ;-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Mike Stump]

On Jul 6, 2007, at 1:21 PM, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> I do hope the FSF answer the backporting question
> <http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2007-07/msg00057.html> sooner  
> rather
> than later.

I'd hope to have an answer to the backport question before we start  
changing files.  I'd hope that we'd change gcc first, then src.  If  
the FSF would just say, sure, you can drag fixes, patches and  
improvements from the FSF gcc repository under GPLv3 back to GPLv2  
vendor gcc release branches for the next year or two and those can be  
released under the GPLv2, I think that would make things easier to  
deal with.  After two years, I'd expect that most of the vendors  
would have cycled away from older compilers.  However, some people,  
like the embedded types can hang on to older compilers for longer  
than you'd expect.

I'd look to the SC on guidance on when and how we start cutting over.

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Mark Mitchell]

Mike Stump wrote:
> On Jul 6, 2007, at 1:21 PM, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
>> I do hope the FSF answer the backporting question
>> <http://sourceware.org/ml/binutils/2007-07/msg00057.html> sooner rather
>> than later.
> 
> I'd hope to have an answer to the backport question before we start
> changing files.

Me too.

Without seeing Joseph's notes, or the binutils message, I'd already
raised this issue with RMS on the SC list.  As was asked on the binutils
list, I'd like to understand whether or not we can backport GPLv3
changes to GPLv2 code.  The question of whether or not the GCC 4.2.x
release branch will be relicensed as GPLv3 is also being discussed.

There is no question that GCC 4.3.0 will be GPLv3, but I don't think
that we should change the files in the repository until the SC
discussion is complete.  I think it will probably reach that point early
next week.

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul  6, 2007, Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> wrote:

> As was asked on the binutils list, I'd like to understand whether or
> not we can backport GPLv3 changes to GPLv2 code.

Since this is in the context of GCC, and GCC is under GPLv2+ (plus
run-time exception where appropriate), the answer is yes, anyone can
backport GPLv3 changes to earlier GPLv2+ code bases.  I suppose the
question is whether the resulting combination could then be released
under GPLv2+, or whether it would have to be GPLv3+ (or say GPLv3).

At which point I wonder why someone would have problems upgrading the
license of an earlier GCC code base.  Can anyone list any reasons why
this upgrade would be objectionable, considering that it was widely
(?) known that GCC (and any other FSF-owned code) would upgrade to
GPLv3 pretty much as soon as it was available?

Thanks,

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> At which point I wonder why someone would have problems upgrading the
> license of an earlier GCC code base.  Can anyone list any reasons why
> this upgrade would be objectionable, considering that it was widely
> (?) known that GCC (and any other FSF-owned code) would upgrade to
> GPLv3 pretty much as soon as it was available?

I am not sure the customers of $X will appreciate a license change of
this kind with a point release, let a alone a customer-specific bug fix
release (or delaying the latter for legal review).  And the same holds 
for OEMs.

Feel free to replace $X by "your employer", "my employer", or the name
of any other significant GCC distributor. :-)

Gerald

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul  9, 2007, Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> At which point I wonder why someone would have problems upgrading the
>> license of an earlier GCC code base.  Can anyone list any reasons why
>> this upgrade would be objectionable, considering that it was widely
>> (?) known that GCC (and any other FSF-owned code) would upgrade to
>> GPLv3 pretty much as soon as it was available?

> I am not sure the customers of $X will appreciate a license change of
> this kind with a point release,

The code was already GPLv2+.

And then, any customer can still do whatever they could, beyond any
doubt, under GPLv2, and then some more: GPLv3 relaxes a number of
GPLv2 requirements, and clarifies a number of GPLv2 requirements to
make sure none of newly-invented restrictions are interpreted as not
covered by the "no further restrictions" wording.

And then, people can still run the program without accepting the
license.

So, honestly, what's the big deal?  Is it just "fear of the unknown",
or is there more to it?

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Corinna Vinschen]

On Jul  9 13:39, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jul  9, 2007, Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 9 Jul 2007, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> >> At which point I wonder why someone would have problems upgrading the
> >> license of an earlier GCC code base.  Can anyone list any reasons why
> >> this upgrade would be objectionable, considering that it was widely
> >> (?) known that GCC (and any other FSF-owned code) would upgrade to
> >> GPLv3 pretty much as soon as it was available?
> 
> > I am not sure the customers of $X will appreciate a license change of
> > this kind with a point release,
> 
> The code was already GPLv2+.
> 
> And then, any customer can still do whatever they could, beyond any
> doubt, under GPLv2, and then some more: GPLv3 relaxes a number of
> GPLv2 requirements, and clarifies a number of GPLv2 requirements to
> make sure none of newly-invented restrictions are interpreted as not
> covered by the "no further restrictions" wording.

This isn't quite correct.  v3 adds restrictions which were not present
in v2.  That's why linking v3 and v2-only stuff violates v2-only, but
not v3.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen
Cygwin Project Co-Leader
Red Hat

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jul  9, 2007, Corinna Vinschen <vinschen@redhat.com> wrote:

> This isn't quite correct.  v3 adds restrictions which were not present
> in v2.

Can you name any that doesn't arguably qualify as a "further
restriction" already prohibited by section 6 of GPLv2?

That it plugs potential ambiguities is what makes it incompatible.
These are not really new requirements.

> That's why linking v3 and v2-only stuff violates v2-only, but not
> v3.

Linking v3 and v2-only violates both.  They're mutually-incompatible.
GPLv2 adds requirements on top of GPLv3, and GPLv3 removes ambiguities
present in GPLv2, which some frame as new requirements.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Corinna Vinschen]

On Jul  9 14:49, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> On Jul  9, 2007, Corinna Vinschen <vinschen@redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > This isn't quite correct.  v3 adds restrictions which were not present
> > in v2.
> 
> Can you name any that doesn't arguably qualify as a "further
> restriction" already prohibited by section 6 of GPLv2?
> 
> That it plugs potential ambiguities is what makes it incompatible.
> These are not really new requirements.
> 
> > That's why linking v3 and v2-only stuff violates v2-only, but not
> > v3.
> 
> Linking v3 and v2-only violates both.  They're mutually-incompatible.
> GPLv2 adds requirements on top of GPLv3, and GPLv3 removes ambiguities
> present in GPLv2, which some frame as new requirements.

Sorry, I just wrote what I got told by a lawyer.  Never mind, I shouldn't
have chimed in.


Corinna

-- 
Corinna Vinschen
Cygwin Project Co-Leader
Red Hat

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Russ Allbery]

Joseph S Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com> writes:

> Changing libiberty, which is shared between projects, would have the
> effect of changing all projects using it (bearing in mind that parts of
> libiberty are under the GPL and parts under the LGPL, and both should
> probably be updated at once).

> As such I suppose the copies of licences in the manuals should be
> updated when the common files are updated.  In the GCC tree this means
> gcc/doc/include/gpl.texi and libiberty/copying-lib.texi.  The former is
> *not* a direct copy of the standard FSF gpl.texi, it has local Texinfo
> changes to facilitate generating a gpl.7 manpage - and those must be
> merged in rather than discarded when gpl.texi is updated.

> There are six copies of COPYING and four of COPYING.LIB in the GCC tree.
> Of these, libjava/classpath/COPYING and libjava/libltdl/COPYING.LIB
> appear to come from imported components maintained elsewhere, and
> therefore should be updated as part of updates of those components from
> upstream.

For the code that's under LGPL, there is some concern in some circles
(Debian, for instance) that the LGPLv3 may be incompatible with the GPLv2,
which means that relicensing LGPLv2 code to LGPLv3 may prevent that code
from being used with code that is GPLv2-only (without the later version
provision).

This isn't the place to discuss whether that's nonsense or not, and I
completely understand if people want to move forward regardless, but since
I first became aware of that myself yesterday, I wanted to mention it just
in case it's a reason to hold off on LGPL changes until that question can
be sorted out conclusively.

I'm happy to take any discussion of the concerns behind this off-list;
again, discussing whether this concern is true or not is almost certainly
off-topic on these mailing lists.  I just wanted to raise it as a possible
reason to delay the LGPL portions of GCC until more people can wrap their
heads around the impact of the license change and understand how it will
affect their software.

It's still pretty early in that process, and I expect that various
projects outside of the direct FSF fold are still working on official
positions on GPLv3 and LGPLv3.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Geoffrey Keating]

Nick Clifton <nickc@redhat.com> writes:

> Hi Guys,
> 
>   I would like to apply a patch to change the files that are shared by
>   the GCC, GDB and BINUTILS projects over to version 3 of the GNU
>   General Public License.  (ie all the top level files except for
>   those that have a distinct project that owns them, plus all of the
>   files in the include/ directory tree).

Hi Nick,

I presume this will include files licensed with an exception, like
include/demangle.h.

Some time before you do this, could you post the exact wording so I
can have legal people look at it?

During development of GPLv3 some questions were raised as to whether
exceptions like this one would truly allow linking with non-free code,
or whether the DRM and patent provisions would still apply with this
wording, and so the wording of the exception would need to be
changed.

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Geoff,

> I presume this will include files licensed with an exception, 

I had intended to files with license exceptions, but that has now 
changed.  The GCC Steering Committee has decided to leave such files 
alone (for now), so I will not change them.

> like include/demangle.h.

I was not aware that this file had an exception.  Looking at its 
copyright header I do not see the exception listed.  Can you tell me 
where I can find it ?

> Some time before you do this, could you post the exact wording so I
> can have legal people look at it?

Do you mean the wording of the copyright header in the file or the 
wording of the GPLv3 ?  The wording of the header would look like this:

/* Defs for interface to demanglers.
    Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002,
    2003, 2004, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
    the Free Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option)
    any later version.

    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
    GNU General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street - Fifth Floor,
    Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.  */

This incorperates two changes to the header as it currently exists in 
demangle.h:

   * The year 2007 has been added to the list of copyright years.
   * "version 3" is used in place of "version 2" in the second paragraph.

The GPLv3 can be found in $src/bfd/COPYING.

Possibly however you are thinking of the exception listed in the 
copyright header of the include/libiberty.h file ?

    Note - certain prototypes declared in this header file are for
    functions whose implementation copyright does not belong to the
    FSF.  Those prototypes are present in this file for reference
    purposes only and their presence in this file should not construed
    as an indication of ownership by the FSF of the implementation of
    those functions in any way or form whatsoever.

I am not going to be changing this file, but my assumption would be that 
this paragraph would remain intact and in place, if/when libiberty.h is 
upgraded to GPLv3.

Cheers
   Nick

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Nick Clifton]

Nick Clifton wrote:

>> I presume this will include files licensed with an exception, 
> 
> I had intended to files with license exceptions, but that has now 
> changed.

Oops - that sentence should read: "I had intended to change file with 
license exceptions, but that has now changed".

Cheers
   Nick

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Geoffrey Keating]

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On 12/07/2007, at 3:14 AM, Nick Clifton wrote:

> Hi Geoff,
>
>> I presume this will include files licensed with an exception,
>
> I had intended to files with license exceptions, but that has now  
> changed.  The GCC Steering Committee has decided to leave such  
> files alone (for now), so I will not change them.

It would be helpful to post the wording that is being considered.

>> like include/demangle.h.
>
> I was not aware that this file had an exception.  Looking at its  
> copyright header I do not see the exception listed.  Can you tell  
> me where I can find it ?

My copy of include/demangle.h was last changed in April by revision  
124174 and reads:

/* Defs for interface to demanglers.
    Copyright 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001,  
2002,
    2003, 2004, 2005, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
    modify it under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License
    as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or
    (at your option) any later version.

    In addition to the permissions in the GNU Library General Public
    License, the Free Software Foundation gives you unlimited
    permission to link the compiled version of this file into
    combinations with other programs, and to distribute those
    combinations without any restriction coming from the use of this
    file.  (The Library Public License restrictions do apply in other
    respects; for example, they cover modification of the file, and
    distribution when not linked into a combined executable.)

...

I think your copy is out-of-date, especially if it doesn't have a  
'2007' in the copyright years.



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Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Geoff,

> I think your copy is out-of-date, especially if it doesn't have a '2007' 
> in the copyright years.

Ah, yes, so it was.  I am very sorry about that.

>>> I presume this will include files licensed with an exception,
>> I had intended to files with license exceptions, but that has now changed.  The GCC Steering Committee has decided to leave such files alone (for now), so I will not change them.
> It would be helpful to post the wording that is being considered.

Umm, do you mean the wording that the GCC Steering committee is 
considering to use as replacement text in files which currently use the 
GPLv2 (or LGPLv2) but which also have an exception ?  If so, then I am 
sorry but I cannot help you.  I do not know what wording they are 
considering.  I am sure that you can ask them though.

Cheers
   Nick

Re: Changing top level files and include/ files over to GPLv3

[Andrew Haley]

Nick Clifton writes:
 > Hi Geoff,
 > 
 > > I think your copy is out-of-date, especially if it doesn't have a '2007' 
 > > in the copyright years.
 > 
 > Ah, yes, so it was.  I am very sorry about that.
 > 
 > >>> I presume this will include files licensed with an exception,
 > >> I had intended to files with license exceptions, but that has now changed.  The GCC Steering Committee has decided to leave such files alone (for now), so I will not change them.
 > > It would be helpful to post the wording that is being considered.
 > 
 > Umm, do you mean the wording that the GCC Steering committee is 
 > considering to use as replacement text in files which currently use the 
 > GPLv2 (or LGPLv2) but which also have an exception ?  If so, then I am 
 > sorry but I cannot help you.  I do not know what wording they are 
 > considering.  I am sure that you can ask them though.

AFAIAA the FSF hasn't yet sorted out the issue of GPLv3 + linking
exception.  We'll have to wait for them.

Andrew.