Re: GNU GPL license in some of the source files

On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 1:21 AM, Chris Mildebrandt
<chris(at)woodenrhino(dot)com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I just downloaded the source for 2.5.3
> (http://initd.org/psycopg/tarballs/PSYCOPG-2-5/psycopg2-2.5.3.tar.gz) and
> looked through the sources. The following files seem to be under a GPL
> license:
>
> examples/copy_from.py
> examples/lobject.py
> examples/copy_to.py
> scripts/buildtypes.py
> scripts/make_errorcodes.py
> scripts/refcounter.py

It is an oversight: psycopg license was changed to LGPL about 4 years
ago. Also note that these scripts are only used to develop/test
psycopg and not to build/use it: they are not installed in a system
(where e.g. "python setup.py install" is performed).

> And there's a copy of the GNU GPL:
> doc/COPYING

This file was dropped from the repos
(https://github.com/psycopg/psycopg2/commit/04c09b7b) but apparently
only from the master branch: it still appears in the maint_2_5 branch
(probably because shortly after releasing 2.5 I started clearing up
the package content for the future 2.6 release). It is an oversight
too: only COPYING.LESSER applies.

> We're very sensitive to GPL code here and would appreciate some
> clarification about these files. Was this just an oversight? And is there a
> plan to provide a source release without GPL code in the package?

Yes, they are an incomplete rewording from the GPL to LGPL switch:
these files probably got less attention for the above reason: if you
compile psycopg with "python setup.py build" they don't end up in the
resulting package. I think we can adjust the wording in the next dot
release no problem. If you provide a patch changing the file headers
it would be helpful too.

-- Daniele