On 2014-12-23, 21:06 GMT, Gerald B. Cox wrote:
Upstream had a few files that had the old address. I've
noticed the GPLv3 doesn't have an address in it's notice. Is
it sufficient to instruct upstream to just remove the address
for GPLv2. Not that they're going to move again, but seems to
be alot of work for everybody if the address is actually
required.
Yes, with GPLv3 FSF finally acknowledged the existence of
Internet :) and it mentions the copy of the license being
available on the Internet.
GPLv2 is from 1991 and we have to admit that the Internet was
not widely available or even known most of the time, so the
preferred method for obtaining the license was the snail mail.
However, I don't think that the “How to use GNU license for your
own software” has any contractual significance whatsoever in
using, so I don’t see anything bad in upgrading even the
instructions for GPLv2 to the Internet age (of course, you have
to fix the name of the program, and decide about "or any later
version" clause).
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of
what it does.>
Copyright (C) <year> <name of author>
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 2 of the License, 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 Foobar. If not, see
<
https://gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.txt>.
Whatever way you decide to resolve the conflict (just fix the
address, or use this modified license information), I believe
your best bet is to make a patch (and adding it via normal
Patch: clause) and send the whole patch upstream for the
inclusion in the project.
Best,
Matěj