[Fedora-legal-list] How to note 'GPLv3 with options taken'?

[Tom "spot" Callaway]

On Fri, 2008-08-29 at 11:56 +1000, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> The GPLv3 allows certain options to be taken, so that it becomes
> compatible with a number of other licences, such as BSD varients.
> 
> Samba4 includes a number of pieces of such code in the form of Heimdal
> (a Kerberos implementation we currently have bundled), do I have to do
> make some special note (other than complying with the restrictions, by
> including copyright notices in the docs)?

IANAL, and this should not be construed as legal advice. That disclaimer
out of the way, here's my opinion.

As far as the code is concerned, you should note that there are
exceptions in the header attribution, something like:

    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 of the License, or
    (at your option) any later version. As permitted by Section 10, the additional
    exception permissions have been granted:
    * Foo
    * Bar
    * Baz

This is a result of: 
"If you add terms to a covered work in accord with this section, you must place, 
 in the relevant source files, a statement of the additional terms that apply to 
 those files, or a notice indicating where to find the applicable terms."

I always recommend people put the actual terms rather than a notice, because 
"LICENSING" and "README.LICENSE" have a terrible habit of getting lost or 
forgotten, then I have no idea what exceptions you meant for this code to have, 
and I end up trying to find you in several years time and forcing you to remember
the licensing to code you forgot you wrote at all. :)

>From a Fedora perspective, any package that add exceptions to the GPLv3 should be 
noted in its license tag with:

License: GPLv3 with exceptions

or

License: GPLv3+ with exceptions

... depending on whether the license attribution states v3 only or v3 or later.

Hope that helps,

~spot