[josm-dev] License clarification for JOSM plugins

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> > Do I understand this correctly: Software can only be included in
> > Debian if it is "GPL v2 or later", and "GPL v2 only" is not enough?
> 
> Well, in general software can be distributed in Debian if it is
> DFSG-compatible[1]: both GPL-2 and GPL-3 are so. I'm not asking to
> relicense JOSM, but just to make the license clearer.

The problem with all that is that it would be easy if I was the sole
author (my stuff is PD anyway); there are numerous others who would,
very strictly speaking, have to be contacted - even if it's 99% sure
that they'll say "oh well, I don't care".

To me it didn't matter until now; it is the Debian folks with *their*
guidelines who want to have a very clear understanding, so I am a bit
reluctant to trawl through SVN to find out the names of everyone who
has contributed, because that work is of no direct use to *me*, it
just satisfies the guidelines someone else has introduced for a
completely different project.

Nothing against you personally, I'm sure you only mean well for the
Debian community *and* the OSM community by including our software in
Debian.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"