Re: guile --version incorrectly prints GPL

[Andy Wingo]

Hi,

On Fri 16 Jul 2010 20:46, address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Andy Wingo <address@hidden> writes:
>
>>     lt-guile (GNU Guile) 1.9.11.159-33df2
>>     Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
>>     License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later 
>> <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
>
>   Guile 1.8.7
>   Copyright (c) 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 
> 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation
>   Guile may be distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public Licence;

Hm, this is wrong too :)

>> The license is wrong;
>
> I don’t think so.  I think the intent was that the ‘guile’ executable
> would be GPL and the rest LGPL.

But which part is GPL? None of the sources that build the guile
executable are GPL. I don't even know what it means to state that
`guile' is executable; does it mean that every script with
#!/usr/bin/env guile must also be GPL? Surely that is not the
intention.

I think this printout is just a holdover from the days of GPL+exception,
is my guess. It is indeed true that Guile may be distributed under the
GPL, but also under the LGPL.

>> Also the "Written by the Guile developers" line at the bottom looks
>> totally superfluous; would be better without the last two lines I
>> think.
>
> It’s not currently possible to remove them, see:
>
>   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2009-11/msg00238.html
>
> A patch may be accepted though, so I can eventually look into it.

Ah, thanks for the link. Nice to know our instincts were the same here
:)

>> Also, what about the years?
>
> GCC, GDB, Emacs, and all GNU software that use ‘version-etc’ (i.e., a
> lot) print only the last year, so I’m not worried.  :-)
>
> (More generally, the Gnulib maintainers wouldn’t commit such a thing
> without carefully discussing the details with all the parties
> involved.)

Ah, I see in maintain.texi, "Sometimes a program has an overall
copyright notice that refers to the whole program. It might be in the
README file, or it might be displayed when the program starts up. This
copyright notice should mention the year of completion of the most
recent major version; it can mention years of completion of previous
major versions, but that is optional.

Thanks for the responses :)

Andy
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