Re: [bug-gnu-libiconv] libinconv and its license

[Laurent Lyaudet]

Hello Daniel,

Glad I could help !

I have added the address@hidden to my reply because it helps that people can browse the archives of the list when they look for an answer to a similar problem.

Please do use reply-all instead of reply (I do make the same mistake sometimes, no worry).

For me COPYING.LIB file contains the Library GPL, that's COPYING file that contains the GPL.

With respect to the license update, it should be LGPL v3.0 in a file COPYING.LESSER since COPYING contains GPL V3.0, and the file COPYING.LIB could be removed.

But maybe, I am wrong and Bruno Haible writes in the readme that COPYING is for the program iconv and COPYING.LIB is for the library libiconv.

Hence, that's probably the reason why COPYING.LIB is a packaged version containing the LibGPL + GPL.

The fact is that I have some librairies with LGPL and in them I have the two files COPYING and COPYING.LESSER (just for the library),

because COPYING.LESSER is a complement to COPYING; it doesn't work alone.

Here, the source repository of libiconv also contains the source for the executable which is GPL and not LGPL.

I don't know the best practice when some repo contains code that is GPL and code that is LGPL.

Maybe Bruno Haible can bring some light here.

Best regards,

    Laurent Lyaudet

Le mer. 1 avr. 2020 à 08:01, Daniel Steiner <address@hidden> a écrit :

Hello Laurent,

thanks for your explanation, that helped already!

I have the same files/content in my .tar.gz as you and I wasn't confused by COPYING / COPYING.LIB.

I was only confused by the fact that COPYING.LIB contains the GPL license but not the Lesser GPL license although README indicates that it should contain the LGPL license.

I believe what you wrote here:

... (maybe it should be updated to be the Lesser GPL file).

definitely makes sense, it would have prevented my confusion :-).

In this case is the LGPL v2.1 or LGPL v3.0 the correct one to use?

Thanks and best regards,

Daniel Steiner

Am Di., 31. März 2020 um 18:51 Uhr schrieb Laurent Lyaudet <address@hidden>:

Hello,

There should be two files for the license, one for the GPL and one for the additional permissions of the Lesser/Library GPL.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html

I do see two files in the source tree :

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=libiconv.git;a=tree

COPYING

COPYING.LIB

The GPL 3 file

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=libiconv.git;a=blob;f=COPYING;h=94a9ed024d3859793618152ea559a168bbcbb5e2;hb=HEAD

The Library GPL file linked to version 2 of the GPL or later (maybe it should be updated to be the Lesser GPL file).

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=libiconv.git;a=blob;f=COPYING.LIB;h=778d0bb5b2a459f6f28ccb2e8aad409c2b497e50;hb=HEAD

(Library GPL was renamed Lesser GPL at some point in time because it could apply to something else than a library,

in both cases it is LGPL.)

It seems OK to me. In this file, I have

                  GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
   2                        Version 2, June 1991
   3
   4  Copyright (C) 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
   5  51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
   6  Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
   7  of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
   8
   9 [This is the first released version of the library GPL.  It is
  10  numbered 2 because it goes with version 2 of the ordinary GPL.]

Do you have anything different in your .tar.gz ? Or did you get confused between COPYING and COPYING.LIB ?

Best regards,

    Laurent Lyaudet

Le mar. 31 mars 2020 à 16:48, Daniel Steiner <address@hidden> a écrit :

Hello,

I was downloading the libiconv sources from:
https://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/libiconv/libiconv-1.16.tar.gz
 
According to the Copyright in the README file of the package, libiconv is under LGPL:

The libiconv and libcharset _libraries_ and their header files are under LGPL,
see file COPYING.LIB.

However when checking COPYING.LIB it seems to be a GPL license but not the LGPL.
To me it looks like COPYING.LIB contains the wrong license.

Is this intentional? Or do I miss something?

Thanks for your help,
Daniel

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